An understanding of complexity

It is only recently that complexity thinking, which originated in the physical sciences, mathematics and biology, has found its way into educational research literature. This phenomenon has been part of a “complexity turn” in the social sciences generally (Urray, 2005) and which Mercer (2011a, 2011b) also identifies as happening in the field of applied linguistics. In 2008, a special issue of the Educational Philosophy and Theory journal was dedicated to complexity theory and education. Recent research has suggested the benefits of adopting a complexity perspective in educational research (e.g. Davis et al, 2012; McQuillan, 2008; O’ Day, 2002; Toh, 2016) as a means of adopting a more holistic approach to investigations of educational change. For example Toh (2016), in her recent study of technological pedagogical reform in Singapore, found that a complexity-informed perspective helped her to better understand the extent of ‘ecological coherence’ across the many layers of the school

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system. Similar holistic approaches have been taken up in English language education research (e.g. Mercer, 2011a, 2011b; Tudor, 2003, 2001; Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008; Zheng, 2015) in an attempt to move away from reductionist approaches to research. Zheng (2015) explains that her adoption of a framework of complexity theory is more relevant than purely causal frameworks because the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices should be viewed as a dynamic process which occurs within a wider contextual environment.

A special issue of Current Issues in Language Planning journal (Volume 14, 2013) has made a call for more investigation by those involved in language education research into how a complexity approach might benefit language planners and contexts. My research attempts to follow this call.

However trying to understand complexity is no easy matter (Ovens et al, 2013) since there is a myriad of associated terminology, for example Complexity Theory (Byrne, 1998; Byrne and Callaghan, 2014; Mason, 2008), Complex Systems Theory (Larsen- Freeman and Cameron, 2008), Dynamic Systems (de Bot et al, 2013), and Complex Adaptive Systems (Waldrop, 1992). Coupled with this is the notion of different communities within the field of complexity, as identified by Cilliers (2001). Hard complexity aims to reveal and gain an understanding of reality and probably best describes the application of complexity in the physical sciences. Soft complexity uses complexity as a metaphor to understand and interpret what is going on in the world. Complexity thinking takes a more philosophical approach to describe a way of thinking which is based on an understanding of the world as being made up of interacting and dynamic complex systems (Byrne and Callaghan, 2014). The idea of ‘complexity thinking’ (which I refer to throughout this thesis as a complexity approach or a complexity perspective) fits with my own ontological assumptions which underpin this thesis (see section 4.1.1 in the next chapter). While a complexity approach might not be able to provide concrete solutions to many of the difficulties that exist in educational change, it “shows us (in a rigorous way) why these problems are so difficult” (Cilliers, 2005, p.257).

According to Mason (2008, p. 33), complexity

concerns itself with environments, organisations or systems that are complex in the sense that very large numbers of constituent elements are connected to and interacting with each other in many different ways.

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Adopting a complexity perspective is an acknowledgement that complexity actually exists and that how we attempt to understand complex systems, such as curriculum change implementation, will need to change accordingly (Cilliers, 2007). Thus,

[t]he message …about complex systems is that in the past we focused on parts of a system and how they functioned – looking at them in isolation. Now we need to focus on the interactions between these parts and how the relationships determine the identity not only of the parts but also of the whole system. Everything is connected to everything else …

(Richardson, Cilliers and Lissack, 2007, p.25)

In this sense, it is the interactions between the different parts of the system and the influence of its environment that help to create the conditions for the particular collective behaviour of that system (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008, p.1). A complexity approach to educational change therefore, helps us to see that there is little benefit in trying to isolate individual factors or elements as a way of explaining the failure of change or as a way of effecting change (Mason, 2009). Indeed, focusing on isolated, discrete structures misses the fact that the sum of the whole system is greater and more complex than the sum of the different parts (McQuillan, 2008). A complexity approach provides a different way of looking at education, away from technical, causal models to a focus on the relationships that connect and interact with people, practices and events across multiple levels of a system (Lemke and Sabelli, 2008).

Curriculum change is complex because it involves not only a change in curriculum content, but also changes in constituent parts, which are themselves complex systems (Hoban, 2002). These elements (e.g. textbooks, policy documents, assessment systems, curricula) and actors (e.g. teachers, parents, students, head teachers, teacher educators, administrators, policy makers) are all connected, not in a linear, sequential fashion, but in an overlapping, entwined web affecting different parts at different times (Wallace and Pocklington, 2002). Peurach (2011, p.17) refers to this as ‘a full world’ perspective in which

the world is full of complex parts, problems, solutions and challenges, all in dense, interconnected, networked relationships, a world full of individuals, groups and organizations working in interaction to understand, confront and reform these parts and their dense interrelated relationships.

Thus the complex system of curriculum change is intertwined with numerous other ‘complex systems’ of different people and parts, all (probably) interacting and

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interconnected in different ways. In this study I use the concept of ‘complex system’ to refer to the sense-making of the different research participants rather than the Vietnamese education system as a whole. However investigating sense-making as a complex system, and thus the interrelated understandings, perceptions and feelings of the individuals involved, also necessitates a wider view of the larger complex system in which it (sense-making) is nested.

Complexity thinking is not the only emerging approach in the social sciences to focus on holism and the web of interactions between the human and non-human elements of a system. Fenwick et al (2011) suggest that other research approaches (such as ecological, social network and socio-materiality approaches) have evolved in the wake of the post-structuralism and post-method ‘turn’ in the social sciences. While these approaches display some differences, they also have important common core characteristics mirroring those mentioned above related to the notion of complexity. The complexity perspective that I have chosen to develop in my study does not suggest that other approaches are less relevant (see section 8.6 in Chapter 8 for a reflection on using a complexity perspective), but what I have found is that the ideas and concepts within complexity have the most resonance with the context of my study.

While the field of complexity is diverse and perhaps difficult to define, there does exist a shared set of concepts and ideas that are used within the main literature on complexity (e.g. Byrne, 1998; Cameron, 2004; Cilliers, 1998; Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008; Mason, 2008) and which I have touched on in this section. The next section provides an overview of some of the key characteristics of complex systems which have implications for education and curriculum change. The concepts of connectedness, feedback, emergence and self-organisation, which I discuss below, have the most relevance to this study of how stakeholders make sense of English language curriculum change in Vietnam.

3.5.2 A conceptual framework of complexity