Comparative Dynamics: Healthy Collectivities and the Pattern Which Connects

Published in 'Complicity', Vol. 3 (2006), Number 1, pp. 73-82.

In this paper, I introduce the notion of “comparative dynamics” and the importance of connectivity as an essential and vital underlying principle for healthy collectivities. Such a notion resonates with Gregory Bateson’s idea of the “pattern which connects,” suggesting not only the functional importance of connectivity as an aspect of a healthy organization at some given scale, but also connectivity as an important principle, which is the basis for how all living patterns are connected together. This paper ends with some reflections on why and how teachers experience stress and burnout as an absence of connectivity while highlighting its importance in the well-being of teachers in healthy learning organizations.

A Response to Nunokawa's "Surprises in Mathematics Lessons"

Published in 'For the Learning of Mathematics" (2002), Vol. 22, #1, pp. 15-17.

Creating Conditions for Healthy Learning Organizations: Embracing Complexity and Principles of Healthy Dynamical Living Systems

Published in 'The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal', (2007) Vol. 11, #3, Article 1.

Complex collectives and phenomena – the mind, physiological subsystems, the biological body, social and cultural configurations, governance structures, evolved species, and the larger ecosphere, for instance – manifest themselves in many diverse forms across a wide range of possible dynamical patterns. Over the past two decades, these various and varying complex collectives increasingly have been thought of, and described in, terms of certain dynamical principles and patterns, framed by the emerging contemporary field of “complexity science.” These complex collectives, conceived as “bodies” or “living” organizations, are extending the usually-taken-for-granted sense of an organizational body. As such, the notion of what a “healthy” body might look like for other complex living organizations can be raised, allowing one to consider what a healthy learning organization might look like for social collectives of various kinds.

Conventional medical research suggests that physiological irregularities reflect the presence of particular pathologies or disorders. These irregularities, however, appear as highly ordered patterns determined by stable, predictable processes. Healthy physiological systems, on the other hand, show differently ordered organizational patterns and processes that reflect a number of important organizing principles for complex living forms across various scales of organization. This paper will examine the dynamics and dynamical patterns of healthy learning organizations and possibilities for “healthier” alternatives through the use of cross-scale analogies of particular dynamical patterns between different “living bodies.” By attending to a number of complexity-related principles behind seemingly disparate living phenomena, this paper will consider the possibility for healthy learning organizations and the kinds of conditions that need to be in place for such phenomena – starting with the need to change the way individuals think about organizations and the health thereof.

The Body of a "Healthy" Education System

Published in 'Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (Winter 2004), Vol. 20, #4, pp. 63-74.

What Complexity Science Tells Us about Teaching and Learning

Published in the "What Works? Research into practice" series by the Ontario Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, (February 2009).

Many teacher candidates grapple with concerns pertaining to the management of a classroom and express an overwhelming sensibility about controlling its many aspects – students, curriculum, assessment, etc. As far as learning goes,
the natural inclination is to simplify as much as possible what students are to learn. But how can teachers create and use complexity rather than manage it, not just for their students’ benefit but for their own? Although complexity is often perceived as a liability, this monograph considers how it can be viewed as
an asset and how the ideas behind complexity science might inform pedagogical practices.

"Can we be less prescriptive in our classrooms - and more successful with our students?"

On the Lived-Experience and Dynamics of Health and Illness: Phenomenological Complexity and Learning Organizations

Published in 'Paideusis', (2007), Vol. 16, #3, pp. 57-68.

Many contemporary theories of “complex” dynamical phenomena have been used to explain and understand a wide range of matters pertaining to the health of learning organizations; however, a more sensitive approach is required which also takes into account the lived-experience of health where the experiencing subject is also a part of an epistemological framework which Letiche1 describes as
“phenomenal complexity theory.” To be sure, there is a need for a complexity-related framework which also studies human consciousness by attending to the structures of lived-experience—in the case of this paper, the lived-structures of health. To this end, this paper examines: the notion of “health” through a
circulation of lived-experience; the concept of dynamical systems in an emerging framework for studying healthy learning organizations.