Chaos Theory and the Sciences of Complexity: Running head: Chaos Theory and Educational Transformation Public education

in the United States is an array of highly complex systems whose results have proven difficult to predict or control. Similarly, the process of transforming a school system is highly complex and difficult to predict or control. Chaos theory and the sciences of complexity (Kellert, 1993; Wheatley, 1999) were developed to help understand highly complex systems. They recognizes that beneath the apparently chaotic behavior of a complex system lie certain patterns that can help one to both understand and influence the behavior of the system. This paper begins with a summary of some of the key features of chaos theory and the sciences of complexity and then explores the ways that these theories can inform the systemic transformation of K-12 education in the United States. What Are Chaos Theory and the Sciences of Complexity? Some of the key features of chaos theory and the sciences of complexity include co-evolution, disequilibrium, positive feedback, perturbance, transformation, fractals, strange attractors, self-organization, and dynamic complexity. Each of these is briefly discussed next. Co-evolution For a system to be healthy, it must co-evolve with its environment: it changes in response to changes in its environment, and its environment changes in response to its changes. Wheatley says, We inhabit a world that co-evolves as we interact with it. This world is impossible to pin down, constantly changing . (Wheatley, 1999, p. 9). A K-12 educational system exists in a community and larger society that are constantly evolving. But how are they evolving? Toffler (1980) has identified three major waves of societal evolution. Each has been accompanied by a major changes in our educational systems, and collectively they provide us with examples of co-evolution between educational systems and their environments. During the agrarian age, the one-room schoolhouse was the predominant paradigm of education, with its focus on tutoring and apprenticeship. During the industrial age, the factory model of schools became the predominant paradigm of education, with its focus on standardization and teacher-centered learning. Now, as we evolve ever deeper into the information age, society is undergoing just as dramatic a change as during the industrial revolution, and this is putting great pressure on our educational systems to co-evolve in major ways. As the pace of changes in our communities and society has been increasing, the need for co-evolution in education has become ever more urgent. Banathy (1991) has pointed to a large co-evolutionary imbalance between education and society, which places our society in illhealth and peril. Schlechty (1990), Caine and Caine (1997) and others have pointed out that our educational systems are doing a better job than ever at what they were designed to do, but that our society is increasingly calling on them to do things they were not designed to do. To identify how an educational system should co-evolve, one issue we must look at is how its environment has changed. This includes changes in the communitys educational needs, in the tools it offers to educators, and in other community (and societal) conditions that impact education, such as drugs, violence, teen pregnancy, and latch-key children. However, an educational system is not just shaped by its community; it also helps shape its community. Thus, another issue for identifying how an educational system should co-evolve is the ways the community would like its educational system to change to better shape the community. Those ways are heavily based on the values, beliefs, hopes, and visions of the community. Disequilibrium and Positive Feedback Co-evolution is fostered by disequilibrium and positive feedback. Equilibrium is defined as a condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system (American Heritage Dictionary, as quoted by Wheatley, 1999, p. 76). Systems can be in a state of equilibrium, in which case minor changes or adjustments to the system are all that is necessary; or systems can be in a state of disequilibrium, in which case they approach the edge of chaos. This might lead one to believe that disequilibrium is a bad thing. However, Wheatley (1999) makes the following points: I observed the search for organizational equilibrium as a sure path to institutional death. (p. 76). In venerating equilibrium, we have blinded ourselves to the processes that foster life. (p. 77). To stay viable, open systems maintain a state of non-equilibrium. They participate in an open exchange with their world, using what is there for their own growth. (p. 78). Prigogines work demonstrated that disequilibrium is the necessary condition for a systems growth. (p. 79). Hence, disequilibrium is one important condition for co-evolution. The other is positive feedback. Systems may receive both negative and positive feedback. Negative feedback provides information about deficiencies in attaining a systems goals so that the system can adjust its processes to overcome those deficiencies. In contrast, positive feedback provides information about opportunities for a system to change the goals that it pursues. Thus, positive feedback is information from the environment that helps a system to co-evolve with its environment. Often it takes the form of perturbances (or disturbances) that cause disequilibrium in a system. Perturbance A perturbance is any change in a systems environment that causes disequilibrium in a system. For example, as our society in the United States has evolved into the information age, a new educational need that has arisen is the need for life-long learning. Rapid change in the workplace and the new reality of multiple careers during ones life require people to be life-long learners. To help people become life-long learners, schools must cultivate both the desire to learn (a love of learning) and the skills to learn (self-directed learning). However, our typical industrial-age school systems do the opposite on both counts, placing stress on the environment (co-evolutionary imbalance) and causing the environment to put pressure (perturbance) on the educational system to undergo fundamental change, or transformation. Transformation Disequilibrium creates a state in which the system is ripe for transformation, which is reorganization on a higher level of complexity. Transformation occurs through a process called emergence, by which new processes and structures emerge to replace old ones in a system. Transformation is in contrast to piecemeal change, which entails changing one part of a system without changing other parts or the way the parts are organized (the structure of the system). According to Duffy, Rogerson and Blick (2000), transformation of an educational system requires simultaneous changes in the core work processes (teaching and learning), the social architecture of the system (culture and communications), and the systems relationships with its environment. Fractals and Strange Attractors Transformation is strongly influenced by strange attractors, which are a kind of fractal (Wheatley, 1999). Fractals are patterns that recur at all levels of a system, called self-similarity. In educational systems, they can be considered core ideas and values or beliefs (Banathy, 1991, 1996) that guide or characterize the design of the system. These recurring patterns can be structural and/or behavioral that is, they can be patterns of form and/or function, and they strongly influence, and are influenced by, complex system dynamics (Senge, 1990). One example of a fractal in education is autocratic control. On the community level of an educational system, the school board typically

controls the superintendent. On the district level, the superintendent controls the principals. On the building level the principals control their teachers. And on the classroom level the teachers control their students. Another example of a fractal in education is uniformity. On the district level all elementary schools are typically supposed to be the same (equal) in such key features as policies, curriculum, methods, and assessments. On the building level all teachers at the same grade level are supposed to teach the same content at the same time with the same textbooks, again to provide equality. On the classroom level all students in a classroom are typically supposed to learn the same thing at the same time in the same way. And even for professional development, all teachers typically engage in the same professional development activities at the same time. Top-down control and uniformity are but two of many fractals that characterize our factory model of schools. While we are beginning to see changes in some of these patterns, few would argue that they were not typical of our industrial-age educational systems, and they are likely still the predominant paradigm in educational systems today. A strange attractor is a kind of fractal that has a powerful influence over the processes and structures that emerge in a system undergoing transformation. Fractals are similar to what Dawkins called memes, which are ideas or cultural beliefs that are the social counterpoints to genes in the physical organism and have the power to organize a system in a specific way (Caine & Caine, 1997, p. 33). One example of a strange attractor, or meme, in education is empowerment/ownership, which entails providing both the freedom to make decisions and support for making and acting on those decisions. On the district level this takes the form of the school board and superintendent empowering each building principal to experiment with and adopt new approaches to better meet students needs and to make other important decisions (hiring, budgeting, etc.). On the building level the principal empowers each teacher to experiment with and adopt new approaches to better meet students needs and to participate in school policymaking and decision making. On the classroom level the teacher empowers each student to make decisions about how to best meet her or his needs. This form of leadership at all levels entails providing guidance and support to cultivate the ability to make good decisions and act effectively on them. A second example of a strange attractor is customization/differentiation (or diversity). On the district level, each school has the freedom to be different from other schools. On the building level each teacher has the freedom to be different from other teachers. And on the classroom level each student has the freedom to be different from other students (with respect to both what to learn and how to learn it). A third example is shared decision making/collaboration. On the district level the school board and superintendent involve community members, teachers, and staff in policymaking and decision making. On the school level the principal involves parents, teachers, and staff in policymaking and decision making. And on the classroom level the teacher involves the child and parents in decisions and activities to promote the childs learning and development. To become an effective strange attractor for the transformation of a school system, the core ideas and values (or beliefs) must become fairly widespread cultural norms among the stakeholders most involved with making the changes. Once that status is reached, very little planning needs to be done for the transformation to take place. Appropriate behaviors and structures will emerge spontaneously through a process called self-organization. Self-Organization Self-organizing systems are adaptive; they evolve themselves; they are agile (McCarthy, 2003). They require two major characteristics: openness and self-reference (Wheatley, 1999). To be open with its environment, a system must actively seek information from its environment and make it widely available within the system. The intent of this new information is to keep the system off-balance, alert to how it might need to change. An open organization doesnt look for information that makes it feel good, that verifies its past and validates its present. It is deliberately looking for information that might threaten its stability, knock it off balance, and open it to growth. (Wheatley, 1999, p. 83) But the system must go beyond seeking and circulating information from its environment; it must also partner with its environment. As Wheatley (1999) notes: Because it partners with its environment, the system develops increasing autonomy from the environment and also develops new capacities that make it increasingly resourceful. (p. 84). A second characteristic of self-organizing systems is the ability to selfreference on the core ideas, values, or beliefs that give the organization an identity. In this way, When the environment shifts and the system notices that it needs to change, it always changes in such a way that it remains consistent with itself. Change is never random; the system will not take off in bizarre new directions. (Wheatley, 1999, p. 85). A third characteristic is freedom for people to make their own decisions about changes. Jantsch (1980) has noted the paradoxical but profound systems dynamic: The more freedom in self-organization, the more order (p. 40, as cited by Wheatley, 1999, p. 87). As long as the freedom is guided by sufficient selfreference, it will allow changes to occur before a crisis point is reached in the system, thereby creating greater stability and order. Paradoxically, the system is less controlling, but more orderly by being self-organizing (Wheatley, 1999, p. 87). Typically, co-evolution occurs through self-organization, but complex system dynamics have a powerful influence on selforganization and any resulting systemic transformation. Complex System Dynamics According to Peter Senge, social systems have detail complexity and dynamic complexity. The nature of dynamic complexity is revealed by Senge (1990): When the same action has dramatically different effects in the short run and the long, there is dynamic complexity. When an action has one set of consequences locally and a very different set of consequences in another part of the system, there is dynamic complexity. When obvious interventions produce nonobvious consequences, there is dynamic complexity. (p. 71) Complex system dynamics are the web of causal relationships that influence the behavior of a system at all its various levels. They help us to understand how a change in one part of an educational system is likely to impact the other parts and the outputs of the system, and to understand how a change in one part of an educational system is likely to be impacted by the other parts of the system. Dynamic complexity is captured to some extent by Senges 11 laws of the fifth discipline and his system archetypes. The laws include such general dynamics as: The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. The easy way out usually leads back in. The cure can be worse than the disease. Faster is slower. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. Small changes can produce big resultsbut the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. Senges (1990) system archetypes include: Limits to growth in which an amplifying process that is put in motion to create a certain result has a secondary effect (a balancing process) that counters the desired result. Shifting the burden in which the underlying problem is difficult to address, so people address the symptoms with easier fixes, leaving the underlying problem to grow worse unnoticed until it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

 Tragedy of the commons in which a commonly available but limited resource is used to the extent that it becomes more difficult to obtain, which causes intensification of efforts until the resource is significantly or entirely depleted. Growth and underinvestment in which growth approaches a limit that can be raised with additional investment, but if the investment is not rapid nor aggressive enough, growth will be stalled and the investment will become unnecessary. Fixes that fail in which a fix that is effective in the short run has unforeseen long-term effects that reduce their effectiveness and require more of the same fix. Senges laws and archetypes identify high-level or general system dynamics, but it is important to also identify the complex system dynamics at play in a particular educational system. Those dynamics are complex causal relationships that govern patterns of behavior, explain why piecemeal solutions are failing, and predict what kinds of solutions may offer higher leverage in transforming a system to better meet students needs. How Can Chaos Theory and the Sciences of Complexity Inform the Transformation of Education? The remainder of this paper explores the ways that chaos theory and the sciences of complexity can inform the systemic transformation of education. They can do so in two fundamental ways. First, they can help us to understand the present system of education and how it is likely to respond to changes that we try to make. Second, they can help us to understand and improve the transformation process as a complex system that educational systems use to transform themselves. Understanding the Present System Chaos theory and the sciences of complexity can help us to understand our present systems of education, including (a) when each is ready for transformation, and (b) the system dynamics that are likely to influence individual changes we try to make and the effects of those changes. Readiness for transformation. Chaos theory and the sciences of complexity tell us that readiness for transformation is influenced by several factors. First, there must be sufficient impetus for transformation, which is created by perturbations from outside the system that produce a state of disequilibrium in the system. That disequilibrium may be caused by either of two kinds of changes in the environment (a school systems community): a) ones that create problems for the system (such as dysfunctional home environments and lack of discipline in the home), or (b) ones that present opportunities to the system (such as the Internet or other powerful technologies to support learning). Second, there must also be sufficient enablers of transformation, which are created by factors inside the system, such as participatory (Schlechty, 1990) or transformational leadership (Duffy et al., 2000) (as opposed to the industrialage command-andcontrol form of leadership or more appropriately, management), and sufficient levels of trust within and among stakeholder groups, such as the teachers association, administration, school board, and parents. System dynamics. System dynamics are complex sets of causes and effects that are largely probabilistic (a cause increases the chances that an effect will take place) and highly interactive (the extent of influence of a cause on an effect is strongly influenced by other factors, including other causes). Regarding causes, system dynamics provide us with an understanding of aspects of the current system that will likely influence the viability and durability of any given change. For example, we come to learn that high-stakes tests that focus on lower levels of learning in Blooms taxonomy (Bloom, Krathwohl, & Masia, 1956) are likely to reduce the viability and durability of attempts by teachers to develop higher-order thinking skills, because such efforts will necessarily reduce the amount of time the teachers spend on the lower-level content, causing a decline in the high-stakes test scores. Regarding the effectsof any given change, system dynamics provide us with the ability to predict what effects the change is likely to have on the outcomes of the transformed educational system, such as levels of student learning. For example, as the Saturn School of Tomorrow found (Bennett & King, 1991), allowing students to do what they want when they want can cause a reduction in time on task to learn the important skills and understandings, resulting in a reduction in learning. Understanding the Transformation Process Chaos theory and the sciences of complexity can also help us to understand and improve the transformation process in which educational systems engage to transform themselves. The transformation process is itself a complex system comprised of many subsystems, processes, and dynamics. With research and experience we can expect to learn much about the dynamics that influence the subsystems and processes that are most likely to foster systemic transformation, but chaos theory and the sciences of complexity tell us that we cannot hope to control the transformation process (Caine & Caine, 1997; Wheatley, 1999). Caine and Caine (1997) state that the underlying belief is that we are in charge and can control the nature of change. All the reports on how difficult it has been to change education confirm the failure of this logic. (p. 12). Chaos theory and the sciences of complexity also tell us that we can hope to influence the process through the use of such tools as strange attractors and leverage points, and that we must constantly adjust and adapt the process to the emerging, ever-changing reality of a particular educational system and its environment (Caine & Caine, 1997; Wheatley, 1999). Strange attractors. The most powerful strange attractors are core ideas and beliefs like those described earlier: ownership and empowerment, customization and differentiation, and shared decision making and collaboration. These core ideas stand in stark contrast to those that characterize the industrialage mindset about the real school (Tyack & Cuban, 1995): centralization and bureaucracy, standardization (or uniformity), and autocratic (or command-andcontrol) management. However, to have a powerful influence on the features that emerge in the system undergoing transformation, the core ideas and beliefs must become integral parts of the mindsets or mental models held by a critical mass of participants in the transformation process, and, therefore, they must collectively comprise the culture of the transformation process as a system. This means that the major focus of a systemic transformation process in a school district must be on helping all stakeholders to evolve their mindsets about education and to develop a set of shared core ideas and beliefs about the ideal kind of educational system they would like to have (Banathy, 1991; Caine & Caine, 1997; Reigeluth, 1993). This entails helping people to uncover the mental models that often unwittingly control their views of education and then deciding whether or not that is the way they really want their educational system to be. Leverage points. Leverage points can greatly facilitate the systemic transformation of educational systems. An example of a leverage point is student assessment. Our industrial-age schools reflect the belief that the purpose of student assessment is to compare students with each other. Hence we use norm-based tests, and students become labeled as winners and losers, successes and failures. In contrast, if we want all children to succeed (no children left behind), then the purpose of assessment should be to compare students with a standard of attainment, so that they may continue to work on a standard until it has been met. The current report card, with its list of courses and comparative grades, could be replaced by an inventory of attainments that are checked off as they are reached by each student. This one change could exert leverage on other parts of the system, most notably the way teaching and learning occur in the classroom, that might be more powerful than the forces that the rest of the system would place on student assessment to change back. Furthermore, if appropriate strange attractors have been developed (e.g., enough stakeholders have evolved their mental models to encompass the belief that student assessment should be designed to inform learning rather than to compare students with each other), those strange attractors will create a powerful force in support of such a compatible leverage point and against those aspects of the current system that would otherwise be working to change the assessment system back to what it was. Conclusion

An understanding of chaos theory and the sciences of complexity is crucial to systemic transformation of our educational systems to better meet the rapidly changing needs of our children and communities. Helpful concepts include co-evolution, disequilibrium, positive feedback, perturbance, transformation, fractals, strange attractors, self-organization, and dynamic complexity. These concepts can help us to understand (a) when a system is ready for transformation, and (b) the system dynamics that are likely to influence individual changes we try to make and the effects of those changes. Furthermore, chaos theory and the sciences of complexity can help us to understand and improve the transformation process as a complex system that educational systems use to transform themselves. Strange attractors and leverage points are particularly important to help our educational systems to correct the dangerous evolutionary imbalance that currently exists.

Date: Thu 10/26/2006 3:10 AM Random Thought: Chaos Theory Of Education Each day, in any given semester, I read anywhere from 120 to 160 daily first-year student journal entries. This morning I read 123. Like most days' entries, some are silly; some are poignant; some are filled with "too much information." Some are short one liners; some are shorter one worders; some are paragraph and pages long; some are superficial; some are reflective; some are deeply personal; some are voices crying out for help. Each entry, each day, reveals clues to the humanity of each student. And, you cannot believe what students are hopped onto, what pressures they are subjected to, what struggles they struggle with, what worries eat at them, what matters weight on them, what demands are demanded of them, what distractions work on them: roommates, friends, jobs, pregnancies, self-discipline needs, sickness, betrayal, fatigue, alarm clocks, parents, grandparents, cars, self-confidence issues, court appearances, sleep, self-esteem issues, boyfriends, time-management, confusion, divorce, discouragement, depression, children, girlfriends, partying, sex, alcohol, sexual preference, Facebook, working out, concerts, holidays, weddings, pets, sorority, fraternity, computer crashes, finances, food, grades, gender issues, drugs, accidents, disease, death, tests, papers, parking, femininity, boredom, masculinity, excitement, homesickness, weather, aloneness, loneliness, crushes, love lost, love gained, distance relationships, being "single," physical abuse, verbal abuse, tanning, prejudice, getting together, nails, breaking up, studying, weight, professors, coaches, GPAs, athletics, majors, hair, career futures, and a host of other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And whether an entry makes me smile, laugh, cry, cringe, or shake my head in bewilderment, I must honor each of them, for each is very real to each student and has an impact on each student's classroom performance and academic achievement. This morning, all this reminded me of a joke. A sixty year old man came upon a wax sealed bottle half buried in the sand while walking the beach. Well, you would expect, he picked it up and opened it. Out flew a genie. In gratitude, the freed genie told the man he could have one wish granted. The man thought and thought. He thought of his sixty year old wife to whom he had been married forty years. "I want a wife thirty years younger than me." "Your wish is my command," answered the genie. And, in a puff of smoke, the sixty year old man became ninety. "That's not what I meant," stuttered the now fragile man. "Ah," warned the genie, "be careful what you wish for." Thinking of all that's revealed in the student journals, it's a warning to be heeded in academia as well when it comes to being student-oriented. To be truly learning-centered, to be sincerely student-oriented, to reach the student as a person, to be concerned about each of them as a human being, to see the nobility and sacredness in each of them sounds so neat and simple, doesn't it. It seems to make such an academic sound so virtuous. It seems to makes a practitioner of teaching-centerness and teacher-orientedness, someone who strives only to transmit information sound so immoral. It's that shift of paradigm that supposedly began when Robert Barr and John Tagg called for a shift in higher education from an "instruction paradigm" to a "learning paradigm" in a 1995 issue of CHANGE. This shift, they said, challenged the fairly passive long-standing lecture-discussion format where faculty talk and most students listen that is contrary to all that we have learned about learning in the recent decades. They said that the "learning paradigm" ends the lecture's privileged position. In its place, we should honor whatever approaches serve best to prompt learning of particular knowledge by particular students." Makes sense, doesn't it. Sounds so easy to do. But, is it? Is it as clean and simple as it sounds? Be careful what you wish for. It is not clean and simple, much less easy. So, here are my "messy" and challenging questions: What are the particular students' particular needs? How do you get to know each particular student and of her or his needs? How do you address each of them? Are they merely intellectual? Are they only academic? Are they personal? Are they emotional? Are they all of the above? How do you separate student needs from student wants? How do you help a student change her or his habits? How do you help yourself change your own habits? How do you forge the essential shared vision between teacher and student? Where are the agreed upon essential first principles of teaching, learning, and education in general? What should students be learning? What should be the aim of purpose driven teaching and learning? What should students do with their learning? That is, where is Peter Senge's visionary "why" of everything we feel, think, and do so? What's the route of M. Scott Peck's less traveled road? Without answers to these questions, you'll have a hard time turning from your teaching to their learning, for the way you picture yourself has a powerful effect on the reality of the classroom. And, you can picture it, each student, as well as yourself any way you choose Be careful what you wish for. If you want to change the world of your classroom, start with yourself. Too often many proponents of learning-centeredness ignore the ramifications of this paradigm shift. They really don't deal with the need for an alteration of our own attitudes, intentions, expectations, and acceptances. They don't really address the requirement to change their thinking and feeling. Changing the paradigm isn't enough. You've got to change your thinking. You have to retouch the mental pictures you have of yourself and each student. You've got to think of yourself and each of them not in terms of the problems such a shift creates, but you have to identify yourself with the promising possibilities. Remember the warning attributed to Einstein: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Be careful what you wish for. The shift to a student-centeredness, then, has to be more than a mere change in syllabus wording. It's more than a shift from "my" course to "our" or to "their" course. It's more than a mere Little Jack Horner utterance of "I care about students and their learning" and leaves it at that. It's more than a first day "ice breaker" exercise that is allowed to freeze over during the following days and weeks. It's even more than mere replacement of one grand sounding scheme with another. What most academics on either side of the issue have ignored is that one crucial word in that seminal article. That word is "particular." It's that word which makes the paradigm shift challenging to say the least. Maybe "daunting" is a better term.

Be careful what you wish for. What then is the governing principle of student-oriented teaching and learning? It's not covering the material efficiently. It's not assessment of learning outcomes. It's effectiveness of whatever are your vision and the lasting stickiness of the learning on a particular student. Let's take it one critical step forward. It's the effectiveness not of "student learning," but of learning by a "particular" student. "Particular." That's the crucial word. Particular: unique, each and every, separate and distinct from others, unique, uncommon and unusual, the exception, unique, a small part separate from the whole, different--unique....unique....unique....UNIQUE. That is, when we talk about learning-centered, we are talking about a sacred, noble, individual, unique "one" we call a student. In real life, this person is inconsiderate not to fit into a cubbyhole. This unique, one-of-a-kind person defies categorization, stereotyping, statistics, and grand schemes. It is that one student who is always the variation on the theme. It is that one student who is always the exception to the rule. It is that one student who is always the square peg in a round hole. It is that one student who is not like the rest of them. It is that one student who is always that statistical deviation. It is that one student who is always unique. It is that one student who guarantees diversity in every classroom. And, a classroom is nothing more than a gathering of those "one student." Particular.... particular.... particular... PARTICULAR. Be careful what you wish for. It's my theory of education that when we talk of student-oriented or learning-centered, the classroom corral comes down and the herd scatters. The spotlight moves from one particular professor in the classroom to a gathering of separate, unique, noble, sacred "particulars" in the classroom. Tidy becomes messy, simple becomes complex, easy becomes challenging, order becomes disorderly, stasis becomes movement, a snap shot becomes a film, constant becomes constant change, calm becomes uproar, quick becomes time-consuming, effortless becomes incessant exertion. Each student becomes a particular person, gets a face, acquires a name, has a story, receives a personality, is noticed, is valued, is believed in, is accepted with unconditional faith, hope, and love. Each student becomes a priceless piece of the future about whose future we can no longer be so cavalier. So, if we are to be learning-centered and student-oriented, we must be concerned not merely with "students," but with each and every one of those variations and exceptions; we must focus on that one, invaluable, unique student; we must remember that word, particular. Be careful what you wish for. It's my "chaos theory" of education. You know what teaching and learning, true teaching and learning, in a learning paradigm demonstrate? You how best to describe teaching and learning in this paradigm? Organized chaos! Depending from what angle you're coming, there is in effective and sticky teaching an acceptance of an orderly disorderliness or a disordered orderliness. That is, a law of chaos. The classroom is a gathering of unique, sacred, particular, individual, particular "ones." Each person comes into that classroom through different doors, having walked different roads, with different experiences, with different expectations, with different personal habits, with different learning habits, with different talents and abilities, with different potentials, with different outlooks, with different diversions, carrying different amounts and types of baggage. And, somehow the diverse messiness and disruptive difference and disorderly distinctiveness has to be harnessed, absorbed, utilized within the context of a threat to expected control and order in order for the productive purpose of learning to occur for each and every student--for each and every student. And yes, it is so often like an exasperating attempt to herd a proverbial bunch of cats. Be careful what you wish for. Nothing about learning-centered or student-oriented is efficient, easy, convenient, neat, comfortable, or simple. Certainly, nowhere near as so in the throw it out there "instruction paradigm." But, as you say, it is so human. So, it is my position that teaching and learning ought to be treated, not as some pedagogical ideal and not as some panacea of method and technique and technology, and not even in scenic paradigm, but as human biography, as the ability or powers or emotions or attitude of a particular individual whom we call a teacher in a particular situation we call a classroom with a diversity of other particular individuals we call students. It ought to acknowledge the humanity of all and recognize human weakness and strengths in all. It ought to recognize an idealistic vision, the grand paradigm, with a realistic working out of things, a testing of wills, a diversity of habit and experience and expectation. There is something far more sobering than idealistic about this acknowledgement. It gives the castles in the sky an earthy foundation. With all this said and done, wish for it. Wish for it, for it holds untold and unimaginable and innumerable and magical possibilities.

The Chaos Theory of Education The Tipping Point brought my attention to something Malcolm Gladwell called the rule of 150. In a nutshell this rule states approximately 150 people is the maximum size that a group can reach and stay relatively self managed (its also called *Dunbar's Number]). What was also brought to my attention was the company Gore-Tex. This company uses that number as a limit to how large a section of their business can reach before splitting. I decided to do some more research on Gore-Tex this morning and ran into [a blog post] that led me to an article in the Financial Times titled ["The Chaos Theory of Leadership."] My Vision Is Taking Shape I have this idea for school that is VERY different from the standard affair. First I want to comment on a couple excerpts from the Financial Times article. Bill Gore left DuPont to found his own company at the age of 46. He drew inspiration from Douglas McGregors The Human Side of the Enterprise , which was published in 1960. This book discussed two management approaches theory X and theory Y. Theory X managers believe that employees are really only there for the money and will do as little work as they can get away with. Theory Y managers believe that people are self-motivated and keen to find meaning in their work. Guess which theory Gore found more attractive. I think theory X and theory Y could be applied to teachers. Something like theory X teachers believe students are really only there because they have to be there and will do as little work as they can get away with. Theory Y teachers believe that students are self-motivated and keen to find meaning in their studies. I should point out here that Bill Gore didnt like the idea of managers and employees, so everyone in the company is an associate.

In Gary Hamels book, The Future of Management , he quotes a Gore associate, Rich Buckingham, who sums up the companys approach. We vote with our feet. If you call a meeting, and people show up, youre a leader. Imagine this applied to education! They vote with their feet. If you have a class and kids show up, youre a teacher. In a way this is already true. Bill Gates mentioned the real drop out rate in [his recent TEDTalk]. He said among minorities almost 50% of freshman never make it to graduation day ([here's a 2006 article from the Chicago Tribune about the real drop out rate]). Teacherless Schools If you take the above and mash it together with the findings of Sugata Mitra ([How kids teach themselves]) I believe it starts to look like a teacherless school. I mean teacherless the way Bill Gore built a managerless company. Im going to wrap this post up but if we, at an early age, REALLY began teaching kids how to teach themselves and take control of their learning, educators would only need to be guides. Ill elaborate more in later posts. I just wanted to note the links and ideas in my head at the moment. miltownmom February 21, 2009 at 11:24 am I think your idea already works great with people who are home schooling their children and the children are doing well. There are a number of families who do that. For children where there is no stability at home, who have no role models, or negative role models, I think their might be other issues to address first. Im thinking of kids like the ones that were in the pack of 20 kids who beat a man to death on Brown Street a number of years ago. Many of the participants were young10 or 11 years old. I remember talking to some teachers who had these kids in classin schools that had 35-40 kids to a class in middle school, not enough books, etc, etc. Im not sure what the solution is.

Chaos theory Is poor behaviour in the classroom really preventing teachers from teaching, asks David Perks Tweet this Share reddit this David Perks The Guardian, Tuesday 3 May 2005 23.21 BST It's amazing how all the worst cliches come out when anyone mentions bad behaviour in schools. The response to the Channel Five programme Classroom Chaos, aired last week, has been a litany of hand-wringing or worse. Simon Jenkins in the Evening Standard hit the lowest note with his diatribe against "immigrants and 'rough boys'". His claim that classrooms are "riots without police" depicts a paranoid fear of young people that he would do well to keep to himself. The general clamour for "zero tolerance" has reached fever pitch. I can't say I expected any different. That is why, when I was asked if I would like to be interviewed for the programme, I was keen to insist that teachers shouldn't simply blame poor parenting for the behaviour of youngsters. (Although it is hardly surprising that they do when, despite the protestations of the NASUWT general secretary, Chris Keates, that the programme was "sensationalising pupil indiscipline", her union has made such a fuss about refusing to teach unruly pupils in recent years.) I can hardly say I relished the idea of being involved with the kind of crude expos that sends a supply teacher into schools with a hidden camera. This was always more likely to close off debate than encourage it. However, having talked to "Sylvia Thomas" - the pseudonymous ex-teacher who went back into the classroom after a 30-year gap - I recognised that she was at least open to the idea that there was more to the programme than simply joining in the cheap arguments about feral children and feckless parents. She gave the impression of someone who honestly wanted to try to understand what has happened to schools. None the less, I accepted the chance to be interviewed with a degree of apprehension, to say the least. It was the most uncomfortable interview I have ever had. It is not that the programme-makers approached me in an underhand way. They were straightforward about their intentions and honest in their attempt to elicit my views. The trouble is, bad behaviour is one subject teachers don't discuss freely in public. The reason is simple. Every teacher has painful memories of the time it went badly wrong for them. But, as most aspiring teachers come to realise when they begin their careers, getting the kids to behave takes effort and confidence that comes with years of hard-earned experience. It is clearly possible to captivate a class or inspire even the most troublesome teenager. To do it requires an adult who has the belief that young people deserve an education, and the certainty that they as a teacher have something worth imparting to a new generation. There are, thankfully, plenty of teachers who care enough to insist that they have something worth listening to. Teachers do not work in isolation, however. The schools we spend so much time in are not immune from social pressures. In fact, they have become the cauldron into which the lacklustre political elite is throwing trumped-up charges of ill discipline and crusades against poor parenting. They shout loudest about "low-level disruption", the mild disobedience which to Tony Blair reflects a lack of deference to authority. Children who answer back and wear poor uniform are the enemy. In fact, it seems most of the efforts to reform schools are focused on the "small things" such as uniform and reasons for absence. But why focus on behaviour? Is it really so bad in our schools that teachers can't teach? Well, no, it's not, actually. Largely, poor behaviour in lessons results from boredom on the part of pupils. It is true that young people are difficult to handle, especially by adults they don't know. Youngsters quickly learn that most adults are scared of being accused of abusing them. In response to this, teachers are encouraged to adopt behaviour-management techniques. The trouble is that handling youngsters using crowd-control techniques hardly engenders a trusting and caring relationship between teacher and pupil.

Even children's relationships with each other are made a focus of intervention. We are told that peer pressure is an evil that needs to be averted. Cries of bullying invite an intense scrutiny of a child's life by various official channels. Children are even encouraged to formalise their own relationships - schools appoint older children in the role of counsellor, using conflict resolution techniques to deal with petty playground squabbles. Every part of a young person's route into adulthood has become problematic. The focus on behaviour underlines a belief on the part of the government that no adult should be trusted to deal with young people without outside help. A consequence of the obsession with behaviour is the emptying out of our understanding of what education is for. Education used to have an implicit purpose. Matthew Arnold saw culture as "the best which has been thought and said in the world". According to Arnold, public education was to be entrusted to schools to transmit this culture to the masses to stave off social anarchy. For those of us who became idealistic leftwing teachers, education offered working-class children a way out of drudgery and the possibility of transcending class barriers. But the hollowed-out shell that is an apology for an education today simply reinforces the need for young people to learn basic skills such as numeracy, literacy and transferable skills in information technology and communications. At every turn, we are told the curriculum is too content-led and examinations are too hard. If we don't know what to teach, it is not surprising we don't know how to teach. It is all too tempting to hand out 30 laptops and let the children teach - or rather, amuse - themselves. I suppose that is what is meant by "learning to learn", another fashionable transferable skill. But if as a society we have given up on education and instead see a return to deference as our goal, then why send children to school at all? Why not just send them straight to work instead? David Perks is head of physics at Graveney school in south London

Chaos theory shakes the old ways of learning Share on twitter Share on facebook More Sharing Services 0 12 July 1996 Helena Flusfeder Helena Flusfeder reports on the multimedia revolution in Israel. Changes in information technology have revolutionised education. Danny Dolev, a member of the Hebrew University's computer science department and chairman of the government's Internet policy committee, takes it a step further. He says that now that "the masses" have access to the sources of knowledge themselves through modern technology, they no longer have to rely on their national leaders. "The information revolution is going though a state of chaos, one of four stages that will culminate in a new society," he says. Professor Dolev is chairman of the National Committee for Information Technology and Infrastructure, as well as head of the Board of "Machba" (the Inter-university Computation Centre which represents the country's seven universities). He says there is no turning back: "Society has come too far. The Industrial Revolution took 200 years. So, the Information Revolution has taken a few years." Professor Dolev predicts that in the next five to ten years, there will be a new ethic about what should be done with new communication tools. The changes can be bewildering: and one level of change is academic research using the new media. Ten years ago, few could have predicted that experimental research on email and Internet Relay Chat could change people's relationships. Brenda Danet, a lecturer at the Hebrew University's department of sociology and anthropology, is a specialist in computer mediated communications (CMC). Her research ranges from experimental language on the Internet, to video wills, people getting married on-line, and online forums/plays where people create characters and have multiple identities. Professor Danet studies the "Hamnet Players", a group which has been experimenting with virtual theatre on IRC. "For these performances, 'actors' from all over the world log on at a pre-arranged time and convene on ##hamnet channel. . . they are not so much actors as players in a virtual puzzle game, in which the full script, with improvisations, unfolds on their screens." Nava Ben-Zvi, director of the Hebrew University's Centre for Multimedia Assisted Instruction and one of the leaders in the field, has been trying to stimulate change in education, by introducing the new technology at all levels of university teaching. Universities are gradually being transformed "from the top down and from the bottom up," Professor Ben-Zvi says, including computation centres, language labs and online libraries. He wanted to grab the opportunity of the "vast changes in communication technology which bring about a change in the real world. We have to re-think our message, mission and models - what we want to achieve in higher education". The multimedia centre was set up in 1993 in the Hebrew University's social sciences faculty as a "multi-purpose teaching enhancement facility". Staff try to integrate multimedia techniques into the curriculum of all the faculties. One of the centre's aims is to coordinate multimedia work on the university's campuses: including a video unit in the Hadassah Medical School in Ein Kerem, the agriculture faculty in Rehovot which uses video, and the Givat Ram multimedia unit which has facilities for video and computer presentations and provides multimedia material to campus libraries. The centre's activity is likely to result in more use of the Internet: students and researchers share laboratory results this way, but new international software will enable them to share video, sound, and multimedia information, and to hold online conferences.

The Hebrew University believes all this needs a revolution in attitudes. That is part of the mandate of its new "Tikshuv" (Computer Mediated Communication) committee, according to committee head Ronny Kosloff, who is also a member of the theoretical chemistry department. He says that the committee's aim is to "revolutionise whole attitudes and the infrastructure of computers inside the university". The plan is to construct a network of services for students, faculty and administration. Kosloff and his colleagues in the theoretical chemistry department have also started using the new open standard programming language Java to create small multimedia "applets" that run on any computer platform for illustrating the problems of structure and dynamics in chemistry. In contrast, Sheizaf Rafaeli, a lecturer in the university's school of business administration, and co-editor of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communications, is a good example of how the medium is being actively used. The journal's original aim was to encourage communication between scientists and publish research results. Two years later, the journal has 2,000 scientific citations and a bibliography of organised CMC resources. While Rafaeli is in daily contact with his American colleague at the University of Southern California, they have only met once. CMC has tremendous implications for teaching, according to Rafaeli, and is also affecting the market for textbooks. As a lecturer, he is cutting down on information through traditional channels and referring his students to information on the Internet.