Prediction, Control and the Challenge to Complexity

Autor/in	Radford, Mike
Titel	Prediction, Control and the Challenge to Complexity
Quelle	In: Oxford Review of Education, 34 (2008) 5, S.505-520 (16 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-4985
Schlagwörter	Models; Educational Objectives; Outcomes of Education; Prediction; Epistemology; Teaching Methods; Causal Models; Educational Strategies; Educational Policy; Generalization; Educational Quality; Educational Improvement; Educational Research; Educational Theories; Research Methodology + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Analogiemodell; Educational objective; Bildungsziel; Erziehungsziel; Lernleistung; Schulerfolg; Vorhersage; Erkenntnistheorie; Teaching method; Lehrmethode; Unterrichtsmethode; Kausalanalyse; Lehrstrategie; Politics of education; Bildungspolitik; Quality of education; Bildungsqualität; Teaching improvement; Unterrichtsentwicklung; Bildungsforschung; Pädagogische Forschung; Educational theory; Theory of education; Bildungstheorie; Research method; Forschungsmethode
Abstract	The dominant discourse in research, management and teaching is one that may loosely be characterised as that of prediction and control. The objective of research is to identify causal correlations within policy, management, teaching strategies and educational outcomes that are sufficiently robust as to be able to predict outcomes and make generalisations across practice. With the construction of a cumulative bank of evidence, given clearly specified educational outcomes, we might see research as supporting the improvement of schools towards "effective" or "best" practice. This discourse assumes that education, though complicated, nevertheless takes place within a bounded system of relatively stable, linear and balanced causal interactions. This perspective on schooling may be understood as the "prediction/control" paradigm. This paper explores the possibility of an alternative perspective, one that is based on principles derived from complexity theory and which may be referred to as the "complexity" paradigm. Under this paradigm schools are seen as open systems, subject to non-linear and dynamic interactions among the multiple factors of which they are constituted, and often unpredictable. This paradigm, it is argued, is subversive of our ambitions to prediction and control. Researchers need to look to formal enquiry methods adopted in relation to other sites of complexity. In the meantime practitioners and researchers may benefit from various conceptualisations to which complexity theory gives rise, i.e. those of recursive symmetries, attractor states, sensitivity at bifurcation points and the phenomenon of "lock in". (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10