Learning through Covid-19: Complexity theory and group learning

Education traditionally relies on predictability and reliability, e.g. set texts, standardised timetables, agreed syllabi, etc. Complexity theory introduces novelty and unpredictability. How to deal with this in a ‘new normal’ post-COVID19 world?

Complexity theory is key to appreciating the hitherto unrecognised power of group learning.

There are two kinds of complexity: Restricted complexity and general complexity.

Restricted complexity applies to complex systems that involve a collection of relatively simple components interacting in relatively simple ways to produce diverse possible, even novel, emergent outcomes, e.g. sand dune formation, bird murmuration patterns. However, when complex systems include humans, restricted complexity is applicable only if the people involved are treated as interchangeable variables rather than as distinctive individuals, e.g. traffic flows, voting behaviour. Tracking the current COVID19 pandemic involves models based on restricted complexity. Different models involve different assumptions about the makeup of the complex system that is the pandemic. Similarly, economic forecasters are currently divided about the eventual economic impact of the pandemic, again reflecting different assumptions about the makeup of this very complex system.

General complexity, on the other hand, goes well beyond rule-based interactions between simple components of a complex system. It deals with cases where the agency of the unique individual humans that are part of complex systems, together with the causal powers of their social interactions, ensure that novel, even unpredictable, outcomes are likely to emerge from the processes of these complex systems. (For more on complexity see B&H2018: pp. 138-143). Groups of people working jointly on projects of all kinds are examples of complex systems that commonly achieve novel, even unpredictable, outcomes. That is, as well as the valuable learning that individual group members may experience, the group as a whole also learns. We call such learning groups “co-present groups” (for elaboration see B&H2018: pp. 146ff.).

Key features of this kind of group activity learning that are widely unrecognised:

• Such learning is distributed across the group.
• It emerges from the group’s activities themselves; it is not ‘applied’ from outside.
• This emergent learning cannot be specified in advance, i.e. group learning is often genuinely novel, creative and innovative. It is also inclusive, contextualised, and participatory.
• Such learning is typically beyond any individual’s learning, when acting alone.
• Nor is this kind of learning restricted to the level of a particular group. This is so because interactions between groups, and also between individual members of particular groups participating in yet other, often overlapping, groups, are both very powerful mechanisms by which further creative and innovative learning can and does emerge.
• No individual member of such groups is able to fully comprehend everything that emerges from the group’s interactive processes.

Conclusion: The future of education consists in moving ‘learning to become’ from its current exclusive focus on individuals’ achievements to encompass and promote the widespread powerful learning that already occurs in small groups (“co-present groups”) right across human activities: parenting and family life, projects at work and in school, performances of artworks, clinical practices in the biosciences, policing and judicial investigations. The list is endless.

Questions for discussion:

The press typically portrays the quest to find a COVID19 vaccine as a ‘race’ between individual research laboratories, or even between nations. In what ways does the above account of group learning suggest that this press portrayal of a ‘race’ may be overly simplistic?

B&H2018 (pp. 144-151) discusses what the above ideas suggest for the future of higher education. What does the co-present group concept suggest for a post-COVID19 higher education in which the new normal may well be hybrid combinations of on-campus/off-campus delivery modes?

Pre-reading for the webinar (B&H2018):

Beckett D. and Hager P. (2018) ‘A Complexity Thinking take on Thinking in the University’, in Soren Bengtsen and Ronald Barnett (Eds.) The Thinking University. Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives I. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 137-153.

UTS staff and students can access the chapter here.

Professor Paul Hager (UTS) is well known for his body of research in informal learning, workplace learning and competence, vocational education and training issues, generic skills, professional practice, critical thinking, and Bertrand Russell’s philosophy and writings. With his latest book co-authored with David Beckett “The Emergence of Complexity: Rethinking Education as a Social Science“ 2019, he is emerging as a global thought leader in complexity thinking, small group work and their significance for education. The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the growing importance of these matters.