Groups, Groups and More Groups: How complexity theory, a compelling advance in the natural sciences, shows how humans learn powerfully and naturally from each other

Please join us for a UTS Life-wide Learning and Education (LLE) Research Group seminar presented by Emeritus Prof. Paul Hager and Prof. David Beckett.

Relationships such as flocking and fluidities in the natural world reveal similar social relationships in the human part of the natural world. Small groups - 2-12 individuals eg dyads, juries, work teams, sub-schools, jazz quartets - drive powerful learning. We claim most human knowledge EMERGES from these intimate systems of relationships, as both novel and generative. We also claim individuals’ identities (as adults, practitioners, performers, learners) mainly emerge from these intimate relationships. ‘We’ generate ‘Me’. The consequences for learning and teaching are under-recognised, for example: such learning can’t be specified in advance, is frequently beyond any individual’s learning, and therefore is ‘distributed’ across groups, such as professions. These confront prevailing assumptions that learning is typically ‘self-directed’, and that individual effort is the main driver of future success. 

We will be drawing upon Hager and Beckett 2020, ‘We’re All In This Together’. UNESCO Digital Library (Available: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark...)

The presenters

Paul Hager is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Technology Sydney. His research projects have focused on informal workplace learning, professional practice (‘professional’ in its broadest sense), the nature of skills and competence, and group practice. His latest book is Paul Hagerand David Beckett (2019) The Emergence of Complexity: Rethinking Education as a Social Science. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

David Beckett graduated PhD from UTS in the mid-1990s (perhaps the first in Education), supervised by Paul Hager. David retired from The University of Melbourne in 2017, as Professor of Education and Deputy Dean of that faculty.