Curriculum and Complex Systems Theory

Abstract

Educators frequently use ideas from complex systems (complexity) theories as metaphors for talking about educational practice. To assist educators in making appropriate use of such ideas, we provide a nonspecialist introduction to some key concepts in this article. We use examples from classrooms to exemplify how the ideas from the complex systems theory can be used to appropriately model phenomena of interest to educators. We caution readers to not use ideas from complex systems theories in inappropriate ways, which would destroy the metaphoric relations that are to be established between theory and educational practice.