Chaos/Complexity Theory and Education

• Published in: Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning Vol. 6; no. 13; pp. 43 - 56
• Main Authors: Mansoor Fahim, Fattaneh Abbasi Talabari
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Tabriz 01.09.2014
• Subjects: chaos; complexity; fractal
• ISSN: 2251-7995; 2676-6876

Sciences exist to demonstrate the fundamental order underlying nature. Chaos/complexity theory is a novel and amazing field of scientific inquiry. Notions of our everyday experiences are somehow in connection to the laws of nature through chaos/complexity theory’s concerns with the relationships between simplicity and complexity, between orderliness and randomness (Retrieved from http://www.inclusional-research.org/comparisons4.php). It is interested in how disorder leads to order, of how complexity emerges in nature. There appears to be many striking and eye-catching similarities between the new science of chaos/complexity and education. An understanding of chaos/complexity theory seems almost crucial to our general understanding of education and teachers’ and students’ needs within educational systems. Chaos/complexity theory raises some very significant issues in an educational context, including responsibility, morality and planning; the significance of non-linear learning organizations; setting conditions for change by emergence and self-organization; the role of feedback in learning; changing external and internal environments (Morrison, 2006); it emphasizes on the fact that schools and learners as open, complex adaptive systems; cooperation and competition; pedagogy; and the significance of context (Larsen Freeman, 1997). This paper tries to provide an overview of this science and how it can inform education