Overview - Three articles by Darren Stanley, Ph.D.

In the past couple of months, I have had the privilege
and pleasure of seeing three different peer-review
articles appear. The first, a monograph in a series on
research that informs literacy and numeracy in the
context of teaching and learning, is a look at how
complexity might inform how teachers might
understand the teaching and learning of mathematics.
Specifically, the monograph looks at the importance of
diversity, redundancy, self-organization, and local non-
linear interactions as a basis for understanding how
collective learning in the classroom, a far messier
endeavor than the more familiar traditional ways of
structuring learning, serves the entire classroom-
which must include the participation of the teacher-
far more effectively. For access to the on-line version
(in English), please go to:
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/i
nspire/
research/complexscience_en.pdf
 

July, as it would appear, was an important month for
publications. Appearing in E:CO (Emergence:
Complexity and Organizations), my piece
entitled "Complexity and the Phenomenological
Structure of 'Surprise'," appears in the Complexity and
Philosophy section of the journal. Prompted by a
chapter in my doctoral dissertation, the contribution
examines the existential themes or dimensions of the
lived-experience of "surprise." Phenomenology and
complexity are hardly two areas of scholarship and
discourse that often meet, although I am reminded of
my teacher, Max van Manen, who told the class one
evening that "phenomenology is all about complexity."
I think that he is correct in suggesting such a thing-
even for one to use the term "complexity" as
complexivists might! Nevertheless, the piece
examines those lived structures of time, space and
relationality in light of certain complexity concepts and
proposes that one might describe and understand
surprise through the lense of complexity. As Casti
might suggest, complexity is already a science of
surprise. And, so, I am using complexity here, turning
it back and reflecting it back upon itself.

In addition to the E:CO piece, I was also fortunate
enough to have a piece-as well as a respondent
reflect up and speak to it-appear in the international
journal Complicity: An International Journal of
Complexity and Education. The work, titled "Complex
Responsive Process: An Alternative Approach to
Interpretation of Knowledge, Knowing, and
Understanding," marks my own humble (and
humbling) attempt to make some sense of Ralph
Stacey's work on "complex responsive process" as an
additional way of understanding, within educational
contexts, processes of knowing and knowledge
makers. My colleague, John St. Julien, offers some
further insights in my piece, "expanding the
conversation" as the Editor might suggest, where he
asserts that Stacey's work offers something much
more powerful than the mere analogies taken from
the field of complexity. Moreover, he notes some
early "roots" in the thinking of people like Margaret
Mead and John Dewey as a bed of ideas that pre-date
the complexity movement. This article, and the
response piece, can be found at
www.complexityandeducation.ca.