Complexity in Education Bibliography

Davis, Brent. 2004. Inventions of teaching: A genealogy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (A short account of how teaching has been conceptualized from the modern to present day. Davis builds on these modernist "inventions" to propose a complexivist approach to teaching and learning that understands education as an emergent choreography - an expansion of the space of the possible. This text not only describes complexity science perspectives as they apply to education, but it also lives out those perspectives in the very structure and layout of the text. Of particular interest will be the sophisticated clustered glossary.)

Doll, William, E., and Noel Gough, eds. 2002. Curriculum visions. New York: Peter Lang. (A unique and multi-layered text that includes a series of diverse and visionary perspectives, problematics, and teaching implications on contemporary issues in curriculum from a distinguished list of contributing authors, including C.A. Bowers, Deborah Britzman, and William Pinar. Significantly, several authors explore and re-conceptualize curriculum as complexity. For a lucid example, see Doll's provocative article on the five C's - Curriculum as Currere, Complexity, Cosmology, Conversation, and Community.)

Egan, Kieran. 1997. The educated mind: How cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. (Egan juxtaposes critically current conceptions of education to demonstrate how they are often positioned as competing discourses. Egan posits a new theory of education that draws from the fields of complexity science, cognition, and education.)

Hoban, Gary, F. 2002. Teacher learning for educational change: A systems thinking approach. Buckingham, UK: Open University. (In this text Hogan explores the central question “What conditions will help to establish a framework for long-term teacher learning to support educational change?” To address this question, Hogan guides readers through a systems thinking approach, situated in complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics, to explore the dynamic relationship between teaching and learning that he utilizes to develop a new theoretical framework, which he situates as a Professional Learning System.)

Kincheloe, Joe and Kathleen Berry. 2004. Rigour and complexity in educational research. Buckingham, UK: Open University. 208pp (The authors investigate intensifying claims and mounting pressures for increased scientific rigour and evidence-based research practices in education. Knicheloe and Berry offer the alternative perspective of the bricolage as a new conception of rigour. Chapters include a focus on the need for interdisciplinarity, the bricolage and complexity, and feedback looping as a way of increasing complexity).