ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
A Balancing Act in the Third Space: Graduate-Level Earth Science in an Urban Teacher-Residency Program
Author: Zirakparvar, N. Alex
Date: 2015-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Graduate Study,Earth Science,Urban Schools,Teacher Education Programs,Museums,Pedagogical Content Knowledge,Science Education,Science Curriculum,Preservice Teacher Education,Educational Benefits,Program Descriptions,Program Effectiveness

This article describes a museum-based urban teacher-residency (UTR) program's approach to building subject-specific content knowledge and research experience in Earth Science teacher candidates. In the museum-based program, graduate-level science courses and research experiences are designed and implemented specifically for the UTR by active Earth and Space research scientists that account for almost half of the program's faculty. Because these courses and research experiences are designed specifically for the teacher candidates, they are different from many science courses and research experiences available to preservice teachers in a university setting. At the same time, the museum-based program is the only UTR, to our knowledge, to incorporate such a rigorous science curriculum, and this article considers some possible advantages and disadvantages of the program's approach. Because the museum-based program's science curriculum is balanced against the educational coursework and teaching residencies that necessarily form the program's backbone, the museum's approach to strengthening the teacher candidate's science background may also inform the faculty and administration of other UTRs in cases in which one of their program goals is to further expand their teacher candidate's content knowledge and practical subject matter experience.
Understanding Atmospheric Carbon Budgets: Teaching Students Conservation of Mass
Author: Reichert, Collin
Date: 2015-08-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Undergraduate Students,Conservation (Concept),Science Education,Introductory Courses,Geology,Misconceptions,Constructivism (Learning),Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Intervention,Science Laboratories,Pretests Posttests,Knowledge Level,Science Activities,Problem Solving,Data Analysis,Regression (Statistics),Cognitive Processes,Psychological Patterns

In this paper we describe student use of a series of connected online problem-solving activities to remediate atmospheric carbon budget misconceptions held by undergraduate university students. In particular, activities were designed to address a common misconception about conservation of mass when students assume a simplistic, direct relationship between atmospheric CO[subscript 2] concentrations and carbon emissions. This particular misconception was challenged through an instructional intervention applying constructivist learning theory principles in an effort to prompt cognitive dissonance and induce conceptual change. This study is based on 1 y of data collected from a survey completed by introductory physical geology students (n = 176), divided into a control group (n = 127) and an experimental group (n = 49). The students in the experimental group worked on an instructional intervention targeting identified misconceptions during a laboratory session. Both the control group and the experimental group were presented information targeting the same misconception through a traditional lecture. Students completing the instructional intervention demonstrated significant increases in learning and reductions of misconceptions relative to students in the control group. However, some aspects of the misconceptions seemed to persist.
Change, Self-Organization and the Search for Causality in Educational Research and Practice
Author: Koopmans, Matthijs
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Attribution Theory,Educational Research,Educational Practices,Change,Systems Approach,Outcomes of Education

Causality is an inextricable part of the educational process, as our understanding of what works in education depends on our ability to make causal attributions. Yet, the research and policy literature in education tends to define causality narrowly as the attribution of educational outcomes to intervention effects in a randomized control trial context. This reduction of the educational process to simple input-output relationships leaves important questions unattended about how change is produced in educational systems and how observed results can be predicted based on the propensity toward change in the baseline settings of those systems. This paper considers these questions from a Complex Dynamical Systems perspective, and concludes that answers to them can qualify the findings from at least some experiments.
Schools and Complexity
Author: Trombly, Christopher E.
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Schools,Systems Approach,Educational Improvement,Educational Research,School Districts,Educational Environment,Educational Change,Leadership

As schools, districts, and the overall education system are complex entities, both the approaches taken to improve them and the methods used to study them must be similarly complex. Simple solutions imposed with no regard for schools' or districts' unique contexts hold little promise, while seemingly insignificant differences between those contexts affect in seemingly disproportionate ways the quality and success with which they implement the same programs. Context must be taken very much into account when initiatives are planned and implemented, as well as when their impacts are investigated.
Envisioning Curriculum as Six Simultaneities
Author: Hussain, Hanin
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Early Childhood Education,Preschool Curriculum,Curriculum Design,Curriculum Development,Course Content,Course Organization,Learning Activities,Learning Processes,Units of Study,Teacher Behavior,Achievement Gains,Academic Achievement,Systems Approach,Educational Practices,Educational Philosophy,Pedagogical Content Knowledge

This paper uses the discourse of complexity thinking to envision curriculum as six partial and coupled facets that exist simultaneously: curriculum as structure, curriculum as process, curriculum as content, curriculum as teaching, curriculum as learning and curriculum as activity. Such a curriculum is emergent and self-organising. It is emergent in two ways: (1) in its deliberate intention to foster new learning, activities and teaching without knowing or dictating exactly what will emerge, and (2) in the sense that curriculum is an ever-evolving reality that is brought forth in the ongoing interactions of the six coupled facets. A self-organising curriculum enables a teacher to create &quot;a space for running&quot; and foster &quot;interactive running in that space&quot; to meaningfully honour both the requirements set by authorities and the interests of children and teachers, rather than a pre-determined curriculum. This model of curriculum was developed and is discussed in the context of early childhood curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Complexity of Care
Author: Collins, Steve
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Teacher Student Relationship,Caring,Ethics,Guidelines,Ecology,Standards,Difficulty Level,Teacher Attitudes

The profession of teaching is unique because of the extent to which a teacher becomes involved in the lives of their "clients". The level of care required to support students well can be intense, confusing, and overwhelming. Relationships co-evolve within an ever-changing process and care is considered an essential aspect of complex relationships between students and teachers. While we do have many standard guidelines to help us, such as codes of ethics, rules, and policies, this paper examines their limitations. The ethics of care require more than standards or guidelines. To mitigate these limitations, we offer a more complex way of thinking as a way to navigate the dynamic disequilibrium of caring relationships. In the process, we emphasize the need for caring teachers to embrace their own vulnerability. This way of thinking provides us with an ecological ethical approach for engaging in professional relationships that promotes respect, safety, and self-worth for all involved.
Reducing the Complexity Gap: Expanding the Period of Human Nurturance
Author: Kiel, L. Douglas
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Neurosciences,Evolution,Biology,Psychology,Social Theories,Developmental Stages,Cultural Influences,Child Development,Adolescent Development,Emotional Development,Maturity (Individuals),Personality Traits,Developmentally Appropriate Practices,Educational Methods

Socio-techno-cultural reality, in the current historical era, evolves at a faster rate than do human brain or human institutions. This reality creates a &quot;complexity gap&quot; that reduces human and institutional capacities to adapt to the challenges of late modernity. New insights from the neurosciences may help to reduce the complexity gap. This paper argues that an extension of the period of human nurturance is one element that may serve to reduce the complexity gap. The argument herein is a synthesis of a variety of literatures that serve to support the notion of rethinking how long humans must be nurtured and educated.
Toward a Common Structure in Demographic Educational Modeling and Simulation: A Complex Systems Approach
Author: Guevara, Porfirio
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Demography,Models,Simulation,Systems Approach,Statistical Analysis,Thermodynamics,Feedback (Response),Outcomes of Education

This article identifies elements and connections that seem to be relevant to explain persistent aggregate behavioral patterns in educational systems when using complex dynamical systems modeling and simulation approaches. Several studies have shown what factors are at play in educational fields, but confusion still remains about the underlying mechanisms driving observed outcomes and therefore more guidance is needed. The framework suggested here throws some ideas in that direction stressing the relevance of nonlinear complex interactions via feedbacks between education systems' transition rates--intake, repetition, dropout, and promotion--and schooling outcomes. Schooling outcomes reciprocally influence transition rates in the system generating aggregate patterns that continuously change (and are changed by) the inputs that endogenously determine them. Furthermore, this paper underscores practical and theoretical limitations of traditional quantitative models that can be addressed with a complex systems analysis and suggests future lines of investigation. Specifically, this article advocates a complexity approach ruled by the laws of thermodynamics to help detect corrupt practices in education systems and improve accountability and governance in such systems.
A Fresh Take on Democratic Education: Revisiting Rancière through the Notions of Emergence and Enaction
Author: Bastrup-Birk, Henriette
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Democracy,Citizenship Education,Sustainability,Difficulty Level,Educational Theories,Case Studies,Equal Education,Politics of Education,Opinions,Theories,Environmental Education,Physical Environment,Marine Education,Foreign Countries

This paper aims at contributing to new ways of thinking about democratic education. We discuss how revisiting this concept may help raise fresh questions in relation to non-formal fora grappling with intricate sustainability issues that span international borders. Starting from Rancière's ideas on democracy, we first examine a conception of democratic education derived from these ideas. Next, we turn to a complexity informed notion of education as proposed by the two strands of emergence and enaction. We discuss how, in introducing additional dimensions, these strands might fruitfully complement the Rancierian conception of education. We conclude our discussion by proposing to reposition democratic education as a process of (co)-emergence afforded by a series of critical moments which, we suggest, can call forth radically novel visions for governing the commons.
Collaborative Educational Leadership: The Emergence of Human Interactional Sense-Making Process as a Complex System
Author: Jäppinen, Aini-Kristiina
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Instructional Leadership,Educational Cooperation,Systems Approach,Interaction,Administrative Organization,Organizational Change,Qualitative Research,School Administration

The article aims at explicating the emergence of human interactional sense-making process within educational leadership as a complex system. The kind of leadership is understood as a holistic entity called collaborative leadership. There, sense-making emerges across interdependent domains, called attributes of collaborative leadership. The attributes give rise to the complex system. They are suggested to be the very agents, i.e. both the source and the outcome of the synergetic sense-making process. Hence, the agents are not the single persons involved who, however, supply the collective attributes that are modified through human interaction in a holistic way. For studying the emergence process in reality, a long-term development process within an educational executive team was exploited. The team aimed at co-creating novel leadership thinking and working practices for its new unit after a merger of separated schools. The emergent sense-making process was examined through such agent-attributes that were identified as attractors within the complex system. Moreover, it is argued that illuminating the complex system of collaborative leadership, this can help other leadership teams to better understand their own sense-making processes in the increasingly complex settings of today.
Bifurcation and Hysteresis Effects in Student Performance: The Signature of Complexity and Chaos in Educational Research
Author: Stamovlasis, Dimitrios
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Research,Systems Approach,Statistical Analysis,Science Achievement,Science Education,Models,Logical Thinking,Cognitive Style,Epistemology,Piagetian Theory,High School Students,Grade 10,Physics,Secondary School Science

This paper addresses some methodological issues concerning traditional linear approaches and shows the need for a paradigm shift in education research towards the Complexity and Nonlinear Dynamical Systems (NDS) framework. It presents a quantitative piece of research aiming to test the nonlinear dynamical hypothesis in education. It applies catastrophe theory and demonstrates that students' achievements in science education could be described by a cusp model, where two cognitive variables are implemented as controls - the logical thinking as the asymmetry and the field dependence/independence as the bifurcation respectively. The results support the nonlinear hypothesis by providing the empirical evidence for bifurcation and hysteresis effects in students' performance. Interpretation of the model is provided and implications and fundamental epistemological issues are discussed.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? The Dynamic Interplay between Educational Practice, Policy and Research
Author: Van Geert, Paul
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Correlation,Educational Practices,Educational Policy,Educational Research,Epistemology,Theory Practice Relationship,Conflict,Educational Innovation,Educational Researchers,Foreign Countries,Teaching Methods,Causal Models,Individual Differences,Teacher Attitudes,Systems Approach

The notion of complexity--as in &quot;education is a complex system&quot;--has two different meanings. On the one hand, there is the epistemic connotation, with &quot;Complex&quot; meaning &quot;difficult to understand, hard to control&quot;. On the other hand, complex has a technical meaning, referring to systems composed of many interacting components, the interactions of which lead to self organization and emergence. For agents, participating in a complex system such as education, it is important that they can reduce the epistemic complexity of the system, in order to allow them to understand the system, to accomplish their goals and to evaluate the results of their activities. We argue that understanding, accomplishing and evaluation requires the creation of simplex systems, which are praxis-based forms of representing complexity. Agents participating in the complex system may have different kinds of simplex systems governing their understanding and praxis. In this article, we focus on three communities of agents in education--educators, researchers and policymakers--and discuss characteristic features of their simplex systems. In particular, we focus on the simplex system of educational researchers, and we discuss interactions--including conflicts or incompatibilities--between their simplex systems and those of educators and policymakers. By making some of the underlying features of the educational researchers' simplex systems more explicit--including the underlying notion of causality and the use of variability as a source of knowledge--we hope to contribute to clarifying some of the hidden conflicts between simplex systems of the communities participating in the complex system of education.
Thoughts on a Pedagogy OF Complexity
Author: Byrne, David
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Instruction,Systems Approach,Higher Education,Undergraduate Study,Graduate Study,College Instruction,Secondary Education

There is now a developed and extensive literature on the implications of the &quot;complexity frame of reference&quot; (Castellani &amp; Hafferty, 2009) for education in general and pedagogy in particular. This includes a wide range of interesting contributions which consider how complexity can inform, inter alia, research on educational systems (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014; Radford, 2008) and theories of learning (Mercer, 2011; Fromberg, 2010), as well as work dealing with specific pedagogical domains including physical education (Atencio et al., 2014, Tan et al. 2010), clinical education and in particular the learning of clinical teams (Noel et al., 2013; Bleakley, 2010; Gonnering, 2010), and learning in relation to systems engineering (Thompson et al., 2011, Foster et al., 2001). This material has contributed considerably to David Byrne's thinking about the subject matter of this essay which is not the implications of complexity for pedagogy but rather how a pedagogy OF complexity might be developed and, more specifically, a pedagogy of what Morin (2008) has called &quot;general&quot; (as opposed to &quot;restricted&quot;) complexity. In this article, Byrne contemplates &quot;how&quot; the complexity frame of reference should be taught at all appropriate educational levels. The article is intended to contribute to a debate about the pedagogy of complexity by putting forth some ideas and stimulating a response. It draws on what is available in the literature and Byrne's own teaching experiences.
The Intelligence of Complexity: Do the Ethical Aims of Research and Intervention in Education Not Lead Us to a New Discourse &quot;On the Study Methods of Our Time&quot;?
Author: Le Moigne, Jean-Louis
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Ethics,Educational Research,Intervention,Systems Approach,Epistemology,Models,Research Methodology,Intelligence,History,Culture

To better appreciate the contribution of the &quot;paradigm of complexity&quot; in Educational sciences, this paper proposes a framework discussing its cultural and historical roots. First, it focuses on Giambattista Vico's (1668-1744) critique of René Descartes' method (1637), contrasting Cartesian's principles (evidence, disjunction, linear causality and enumeration), with the open rationality of the &quot;ingenium&quot; (capacity to establish relationships and contextualize). Acknowledging the teleological character of scientific inquiry (Bachelard) and the inseparability between &quot;subject&quot; and &quot;object&quot;, the second part of the text explores the relevance of &quot;designo&quot; (intentional design) implemented by Leonardo da Vinci (1453-1519) in order to identify and formulate problems encountered by researchers. Referring to contemporary epistemologists (Bachelard, Valéry, Simon, Morin), this contribution finally questions the relationships between the &quot;ingenio&quot; (pragmatic intelligence), the &quot;designo&quot; (modeling method) and ethics. It proposes one to conceive the paradigm of complexity through the relationships it establishes between (pragmatic) action, (epistemic) reflection and meditation (ethics).
Complexity Thinking and Methodology: The Potential of &quot;Complex Case Study&quot; for Educational Research
Author: Hetherington, Lindsay
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Systems Approach,Case Studies,Educational Research,Research Methodology

Complexity theories have in common perspectives that challenge linear methodologies and views of causality. In educational research, relatively little has been written explicitly exploring their implications for educational research methodology in general and case study in particular. In this paper, I offer a rationale for case study as a research approach that embodies complexity, and I explore the implications of a &quot;complexity thinking&quot; stance for the conduct of case study research that distinguishes it from other approaches. A complexity theoretical framework rooted in the key concepts of emergence and complexity reduction, blended using a both/and logic, is used to develop the argument that case study enables the researcher to balance the open-ended, non-linear sensitivities of complexity thinking with the reduction in complexity, inherent in making methodological choices. The potential of this approach is illustrated using examples drawn from a complexity theoretical research study into curriculum change.
The Complexity of Transdisciplinary Literature Reviews
Author: Montuori, Alfonso
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Literature Reviews,Active Learning,Inquiry,Integrated Activities,Integrated Curriculum,Systems Approach,Interdisciplinary Approach,Cognitive Processes,Epistemology,Educational Philosophy,Educational Practices

The transdisciplinary literature review is an opportunity to situate the inquirer in an ecology of ideas. This article explores how we might approach this process from a perspective of complexity, and addresses some of the key challenges and opportunities. Four main dimensions are considered: (a) inquiry-based rather than discipline-based; (b) integrating rather than eliminating the inquirer from the inquiry; (c) meta-paradigmatic rather than intra-paradigmatic; and (d) applying systems and complex thought rather than reductive/disjunctive thinking.
Complexity, Methodology and Method: Crafting a Critical Process of Research
Author: Alhadeff-Jones, Michel
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Research Methodology,Systems Approach,Scientific Methodology,Models,Theories

This paper defines a theoretical framework aiming to support the actions and reflections of researchers looking for a &quot;method&quot; in order to critically conceive the complexity of a scientific process of research. First, it starts with a brief overview of the core assumptions framing Morin's &quot;paradigm of complexity&quot; and Le Moigne's &quot;general system theory&quot;. Distinguishing &quot;methodology&quot; and &quot;method&quot;, the framework is conceived based on three moments, which represent recurring stages of the spiraling development of research. The first moment focuses on the definition of the research process and its sub-systems (author, system of ideas, object of study and method) understood as a complex form of organization finalized in a specific environment. The second moment introduces a matrix aiming to model the research process and nine core methodological issues, according to a programmatic and critical approach. Using the matrix previously modeled, the third moment suggests conceiving of the research process following a strategic mindset that focuses on contingencies, in order to locate, share and communicate the path followed throughout the inquiry.