Complex Thinking Research Articles

Education in Mexico and technological public policy for developing complex thinking in the digital era: A model for technology management

Currently, numerous studies highlight the importance of technology as an effective resource for improving the quality of education. Like other countries in the region, Mexico greatly emphasizes improving its education system comprehensively and competitively, and technology has become a fundamental strategy to achieve this goal. Technology has allowed it to fill existing gaps and introduce innovative models in the digital age, promoting human capital development and fostering thriving communities. Technology also facilitates the development of competencies, such as complex thinking and the skills required to utilize Education 4.0 resources. However, these advances are at risk without examining the possibilities for technology transfer in the region's educational institutions. Accordingly, the following questions arise: a) What is the probability of achieving technology transfer to primary education institutions; b) What investments or modifications are necessary in the existing infrastructure to transfer educational and other technologies? We aimed to develop a quantitative data analysis model to examine the capacity of primary education institutions, applicable also to higher education, to adapt, assimilate, and transfer technology to improve educational quality in Mexico, as proposed by González Sabater in 2011. The results suggest the feasibility of a technology management system validated through a reliable database, considering the existing infrastructure as a basis for technology transfer. This research is relevant in establishing the probability of success of an educational institution in completing the process of assimilation and technology transfer, thus also contributing to governmental decision-making on educational spending.

Epistemic decentering in education for responsibility: revisiting the theory and practice of educational integrity

There is no consensus on definitions of educational or academic integrity, and their philosophical relationship with the notion of responsibility is complex. Here, we aim to i) disentangle these three notions. We lean on a philosophical framework of ethics and our method involves different kinds of reasoning and the modeling of complex thinking. We combine this frame with a three-level epistemic dimension to allow us ii) to model the psycho-epistemic (level 1), epistemological (level 2), and phenomenological (ground 0) ways in which subjects interact with their own norms and knowledge and with those of the surrounding institutions. Finally, iii) we also aim to propose concrete educational means by which to implement educational integrity. Our theoretical findings lead us i) to consider responsibility as a process that consists of establishing a dialogical relationship between one’s inner and outer worlds, which relies on an epistemic decentering. Based on this, we argue that education for responsibility founds a new, expanded definition of educational integrity. Moreover, ii) empirical evidence suggests that this model can be operationalized by psychological indicators such as critical and complex thinking, cognitive flexibility, contextual relativism, and decentering, all of which are skills that can be fostered in spite of simplifying thinking, dogmatism, naive epistemology (and dualism) and cognitive fusion, respectively. It points to iii) the benefits of an educational approach in which subjects are encouraged to practice different types of meditation and to feel free to break institutional rules. Therefore, promoting educational integrity may require methods that lie beyond the obvious choices. After discussing the scope and limitations of our results, we propose a new research agenda for educational integrity, which could ground a field of research broader than just academic integrity, but complementary to it.

O.2.1-2 How do social prescribing interventions for physical activity work from a complex intervention research perspective: a narrative review on mechanisms of change

Abstract Purpose Social prescribing (SP) interventions for physical activity (PA) remain to reveal consistent findings on health outcomes, partly because suboptimal research methods have been applied. The purpose of this study was to synthesise the behaviour-related mechanisms and socio-economic considerations of SP interventions for PA based on a narrative literature review. The synthesis was then used to develop a logic model inspired by the methodology from complex intervention research, illustrating how these interventions may improve health outcomes. Methods A narrative review was performed using Medline, Embase and PsycINFO to identify scientific literature on SP interventions for PA. The literature search was executed on February 20-21, 2023. Inclusion criteria were; studies investigating person-centred mechanisms and/or system-based mechanisms. Any population was eligible, and no source restrictions were applied. Findings were synthesised and illustrated in a comprehensive logic model on SP interventions for PA. Results A total of 340 studies were identified from the electronic literature search, and 11 studies met the inclusion criteria. Person-centred mechanisms for successful SP intervention were identified as: (1) Integrating medical and social needs in the referral process; (2) Trusted and informed relationships in the linking process; and (3) Meaningful relationships in a non-stigmatising setting in the engagement process. System-based mechanisms for successful SP intervention were identified as the need to fully integrate the SP interventions in the General Practice and community organisations. In addition, successful SP intervention was, among other findings, explained through emotional buy-in from all SP agents and clients. Conclusion The present study display mechanisms of SP interventions for PA, suggesting that they should include socio-economic considerations and preferably system thinking. We also urge for more complex intervention thinking in developing and evaluating SP interventions for PA to clarify the mechanisms of what works for whom and under which circumstances. Support/Funding Source No funding source was applied for this study.

AI-Based Platform Design for Complex Thinking Assessment: A Case Study of an Ideathon Using the Transition Design Approach

Emerging Artificial Intelligence-enhanced technology platforms in education warrant attention to exploring new learning strategies and dynamics. Keeping up with the accelerating momentum to bring classic traditional learning activities to Artificial Intelligence-supported platforms may unbalance the interest in developing the participants’ higher-order thinking. This article presents case study research of an Artificial Intelligence-based technological platform to measure complex thinking traits of higher education participants in an Ideathon learning scenario. The didactical strategy was grounded in the Transition Design approach, with Sharing Economy as the challenge. An overview of the process for developing Artificial Intelligence-supported activities, the challenges and risks identified in the development, and a classification model and enhancements for future implementation in a subsequent pilot are presented. The findings set a guideline for balancing Artificial Intelligence-powered educational activities and the development of the participants’ complex thinking.

Creating Depth of Knowledge Using Team-Based Research Projects in Money and Banking and Financial Markets Courses

Many undergraduate programs enroll students in a Money and Banking or Financial Markets course just after completing the principles of economics or an introductory financial management course. As professors who have taught Money and Banking and Financial Markets courses over a number of years, we have often faced a conundrum. Students note in their evaluations and comments that the course content tends to be “a bit dry” when compared to their experience in introductory courses. As a result, in developing our financial markets course, we have incorporated a project that has helped to engage students. Student responses indicate success in making the material more pertinent, engaging, and accessible. Our “Financial Markets Project” requires students to produce a comprehensive, structured analysis of a specific financial market instrument or, alternatively, some institutional aspect of financial markets. After completing the project, students are required to present their findings to the class. This project helps students to develop skills they will need in their subsequent academic and working lives, such as: organizing and conducting research; collecting, sorting and analyzing data; writing and editing their findings; and publicly presenting their results to a peer audience. The entire project is carried out using the Microsoft Office® Suite so students also develop technical proficiency with spreadsheets, presentation software, and simple statistical techniques. Analytical prowess is required in developing the statistical relationships and in presenting and explaining statistical results. This project is important for students because it helps them to develop complex critical thinking and writing skills along with vital presentation and public speaking competencies.

Integrating one health: exploring the global dialogue on bioethics.

Unesco's World Bioethics Day, whose theme this year is the protection of future generations, reveals the centrality of the concept of one-health, as the main way to guarantee a future for the planet seen as the common home of all living beings. The recent pandemic has sufficiently shown how animal health is linked to human health and how only the balance of the entire planet guarantees both. Living on earth as human beings, no longer blinded by the Anthropocene's arrogance, but conscious of having a fundamental responsibility for the health care and well-being of every species is the imperative that should guide scientific research, education and social life. Thus, a renovating of the education system is essential to break down rigid boundaries between disciplines and promote complex and critical thinking.

Teaching and Investigating on Modelling through Analogy in Primary School

Physics deals with complex systems by reducing them to relationships between a limited number of relevant quantities and general principles. Since we live in a reality characterised by an increasing complexity in all fields, an indispensable challenge arises for education to turn basic science instruction into a key stage of education per se. Is it possible to introduce some aspects of the physics approach as early as the first school years? Which ones, how, and with what results? Here, results of the initial phase of a three-year project on complexity are presented. This educational innovation path has been developed for elementary and middle schools and is designed as a gentle introduction to complex and systemic thinking. It aims to foster in children reasoning by analogies and the development of simple but effective and versatile basic concepts. The project exploits the use of the small set of primary metaphors already available in children’s cognitive toolkit to apply them to describing the characteristics of various circuits, from marbles to water and air to electricity. Pupils’ feedback was analysed through a single case study with a qualitative and quantitative methodology. Results were encouragingly positive and showed a wide range of abilities to capture and develop analogies on the topic of the circuit.

What Stops Fairness from Emerging in Assessment? The Forces on a Complex Adaptive System.

Workplace-based assessment occurs in authentic, dynamic clinical environments where reproducible, measurement-based assessments can often not be implemented. In these environments, research approaches that respect these multiple dynamic interactions, such as complexity perspectives, are encouraged. Previous research has shown that fairness in assessment is a nonlinear phenomenon that emerges from interactions between its components and behaves like a complex adaptative system. The aim of this study was to understand the external forces on the complex adaptive system which may disrupt fairness from emerging. We conducted online focus groups with a purposeful sample of nineteen academic leaders in the Netherlands. We used an iterative approach to collection, analysis and coding of the data and interpreted the results using a lens of complexity, focusing on how individual elements of fairness work in concert to create systems with complex behaviour. We identified three themes of forces which can disrupt fairness: forces impairing interactivity, forces impairing adaption and forces impairing embeddedness. Within each of these themes, we identified subthemes: assessor and student forces, tool forces and system forces. Consistent with complexity theory, this study suggests there are multiple forces which can hamper the emergence of fairness. Whilst complexity thinking does not reduce the scale of the challenge, viewing forces through this lens provides insight into why and how these forces are disrupting fairness. This allows for more purposeful, meaningful changes to support the use of fair judgement in assessment in dynamic authentic clinical workplaces.

Data Analysis in Factors of Social Entrepreneurship Tools in Complex Thinking: An exploratory study

This work presents the results of an exploratory pilot that analyzes the factors that influence self-reported social entrepreneurship competency and previous family backgrounds that might positively influence the development of the set of sub-competencies of complex thinking. It has been observed that individuals who put into practice the competencies that make up complex thinking perform better in overcoming the challenges of generating social value in contemporary society. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 47 students attending a private Higher Education Institution in Mexico using the “Profile of the Social Entrepreneur Instrumentóó. The data analysis comprised 1) validation of the instruments reliability, 2) tendencies and the frequency distribution of the data, 3) grouping by entrepreneurial family background, 4) the principal component analysis and 5) a clustering analysis. Our results support that forming Complex Thinking competencies for social entrepreneurship is not directly influenced by previous family experiences. Still, they recognize that these experiences are relevant in helping students become familiar with entrepreneurship-related issues. This paper empirically supports the hypotheses that social entrepreneurship experiences affect the correlations between social innovations and resolving complex global public problems.

“We Need to Talk about This More”: Students on Just War and How to End War

This article describes two Socratic Seminar discussions, one focused on questioning just war and the other offering a perspective on how to end war. These discussions are the focus of this article because they show the complex and nuanced thinking and questioning students engaged in about what might constitute a just war (if anything) and how war can be ended by determined humans.

Research foresight in bridging open science and open innovation: Overview based on the complex thinking paradigm

Open innovation benefits from access to cutting-edge discoveries to increase their transformation into tangible applications for the benefit of society. Improving research quality has been proposed as a primary objective of open science by the United Nations, to increase science reproducibility, impact, and trust, leading to robust decision-making and policies. However, opening access to data and processes is insufficient for researchers to achieve open innovation in the context of globalization, for example, by gathering insights from external and internal sources. Developing the appropriate mindset to manage complexity and generate synergy among researchers in academia, industry, and the government is essential to catalyze knowledge and transform it into relevant innovations for society. To gain insights into the roles and challenges of researchers aiming to bridge the gap between open science and open innovation, a decade-plus Mapping Literature Review was conducted based on the complex thinking paradigm. Complex thinking allows for novel connections of the information collected through open science and open innovation, considering different forms of engaging with alternative means of knowledge creation that may promote innovative and critical thinking. The findings revealed: a) broad positioning of the terms in the European Union; b) open access and open data as current driving themes; c) a constant trade-off between the terms “open data” and “information protection”; d) lack of studies on researchers’ complex thinking to help them manage openness; e) absence of the environmental helix in the initiatives; and (f) challenges in innovative communication and collaborative practices among public and private entities. Overall, we identified an opportunity to develop researchers’ complex thinking such that the openness of information becomes a shared responsibility among partners across multiple helices. This shared responsibility can have methodological implications that permeate how open science and open innovation are theorized and, in practice, facilitate the development of fundamental collaborative research procedures.

Leadership at the Intersection of Healthcare and Constructive Developmental Theory: A scoping review

Objective: The purpose of this scoping review was to examine the nature and extent of the evidence for the use of a stage theory of adult development, Constructive Developmental Theory (CDT) within healthcare leadership. Design: A systematic methodology was employed, utilising inclusion and exclusion criteria and searching across seven databases. Main Outcome Measures: Summary of literature in response to three key questions. Results: A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses – Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) flow diagram illustrates the study selection process with 154 records screened, 35 full-text articles assessed for eligibility and 7 studies included in the final analysis. Three themes emerged from the data: (1) healthcare as a complex system, (2) complexity of leadership in healthcare, (3) developmental leadership progression in healthcare. Conclusions: This review highlighted that CDT could provide a roadmap for individual change and adult developmental growth, thereby supporting the opportunity for more complex thinking and perspective taking within healthcare leadership. For the healthcare leader, the benefit of an awareness, understanding and application of CDT, is the potential for an increased capacity for recognising and dealing with complex challenges both personally and professionally. The study protocol is registered with Open Science Framework (OSF)

Health System Transformation Playbook and Unified Care Model: an integrated design, systems & complexity thinking approach to health system transformation.

Health system transformation is a complex journey that often results in unintended consequences. Existing methods to drive health system transformation have intrinsic limitations which impede successful implementation in local contexts. The Health System Transformation Playbook is a design-, systems-, and complexity-thinking enabled methodology to systematically design, prioritize and test health system and services transformation actions, anchored on iterative story telling, model building and pathfinding processes that tackles the scale of socially and technologically complex adaptive systems through time. The Unified Care Model and its associated cascade of models are examples of ongoing application of Health System Transformation Playbook in a regional population health system in Singapore. Use of Health System Transformation Playbook enables stewards of health systems to gain a more systematic and coherent understanding of health systems and services planning and organization development, to accelerate transformation towards people-centered, integrated and value-driven health systems.

Assessing Human Mobility and Its Climatic and Socioeconomic Factors for Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Promoting human mobility and reducing inequality among countries are the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) targets. However, measuring human mobility, assessing its heterogeneity and changes, and exploring associated mechanisms and context effects are still key challenges, especially for developing countries. This study attempts to review the concept of human mobility with complex thinking, assess human mobility across forty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and examine the effect of climatic and socioeconomic factors. Based on the coined definition of human mobility, international migration and cross-border trips are taken to assess human mobility in terms of permanent migration and temporary moves. The forty SSA countries are hence classified into four mobility groups. Regression models are performed to identify key determinants and estimate their effects on mobility. The results reveal that seven of these forty countries had a high mobility, whereas most experienced a decline in permanent migration. Lesotho, Cabo Verde, and Namibia presented high temporary moves, while Eritrea, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, and Liberia had a high permanent migration. Climatic and socioeconomic conditions demonstrated significant effects on mobility but were different for temporary moves and permanent migration. Wet extremes reduced mobility, whereas extreme temperature variations had positive effects. Dry extremes promoted permanent migration but inhibited temporary moves. Economic wealth and political instability promoted permanent migration, while the young population counteracted temporary moves. Food insecurity and migrant networks stimulated human mobility. The analysis emphasises the interest in analysing human mobility for risk reduction and sustainability management at the multi-county level.

Learning to Make Hydroponic-Based Animal Feed

Mild intellectually disabled is an individual who has intelligence far below the average individual in general. Although the intellectually disabled have intelligence that is far below the average, their abilities can be optimized and empowered through learning simple skills that do not require complex thinking or semi-skills. Hydroponic-based animal feed production is an activity in the semi-skills category that has the potential to be used as a medium for learning and empowering the intellectually disabled. This study aims to evaluate the potential of hydroponic-based animal feed production activities as a medium of learning and empowerment to improve the ability and physical suitability of the intellectually disabled. The research method used is field testing and Research and Development (R&D), and data is obtained through observation, interviews, and Focus Group Discussions (FGD). We found that the intellectually disabled can perform stages of work in the manufacture of hydroponic-based animal feed, the introduction of tools and materials, the manufacture of animal feed, the maintenance of tools and materials, and the maintenance of results. The results showed that every step in hydroponic-based animal feed production activities had been implemented and could be used as a medium of learning and empowerment to optimize and empower the intellectually disabled.

Teaching complex time through pattern thinking and understanding

To move beyond its industrial era mechanistic paradigm, western education needs to include knowledges that enable students to think with and engage an increasingly complex world. The teaching and learning of complex time is one such knowledge, and pattern thinking and understanding are useful for this undertaking. As part of their teaching practice, the author developed and implemented a patterns-based design and educational strategy called spiraltime patterning with secondary school students more than a decade ago. Recently, the approach was implemented with university students as part of a doctoral inquiry project that focused on general complexity thinking and understanding. Spiraltime patterning is designed to perturb the dominance of linear temporalities and reposition them within a multitemporal patterning of complex time. The broad aim of this work is to contribute to transformational education, by facilitating temporal coherence and wellbeing for students, through embodied understanding of time as a complex phenomenon.

Patient Safety in Palliative Care at the End of Life from the Perspective of Complex Thinking.

Actions for patient safety at the end of life must be aligned with the principles of palliative care, such as promoting comfort and quality of life. Faced with this complex process, health professionals need to seek the central relationships of the concepts of safety and palliative care to the end of life, in line with the wishes and expectations of the person and family members/caregivers, as well as with available resources and the capacity of services but, above all, reinforcing the importance of a non-reductionist care approach, which encompasses the various aspects inherent to humans. Hence, we present a new vision of patient safety in palliative care at the end of life based on the complex thinking of Edgar Morin, scientific evidence, and health policies in the global context. We discuss the deficiencies and disjunctions in thought and practice of palliative care at the end of life and patient safety, as well as the challenges for the conjunction of these complex themes, to finally present potential ways to apply complex thinking in the safe care of the patient at the end of life. The problematization of different aspects for the interposition of knowledge about patient safety in palliative care at the end of life portrays the existence of intersubjective connections and the multidimensionality that permeate the guidelines, actions and relationships that sustain the disciplines.

Participatory Innovation Praxis: A trans-disciplinary method for conducting high-complexity social transformations

Why is humanity heading for self-destruction and planetary devastation? Why are so many problems –climate crisis, hunger, migrations, organized crime, inequality, desertification, pollution, etc.– out of control and getting worse? These high-complexity problems involve large numbers of actors, conflicts, issues, interpretations and cultures, and require pulling together knowledge from widely different sources to be possibly governed. Yet the master paradigm that has ruled humanity over the last four centuries –i.e., Cartesian, analytical or simplifying thinking– makes this practically impossible because of its principles of separation, reduction and abstraction that are embodied in today’s scientific disciplines. The Participatory Innovation (PI) Praxis offers a viable alternative, within the emerging post-Cartesian paradigm of systems thinking or complex thinking. PI’s theory comes from key systems thinkers: Ackoff, Ashby, Beer, Ozbekhan, Morin and Schein; its empirical grounds, from experiences in many fields and places, including hundreds of innovations. PI makes high-complexity challenges understandable and governable through methodical design and implementation of consensus social-cultural transformations, by using the astounding capacities of human minds and natural language to process complex meanings. This article illustrates the method with 25-year impacts of two cases in Chile. It closes by discussing implications for policy and for cultural and civilizational matters.

From pandemia to polifonia: community “declaration of dependence”

In times of crisis, connections among people, cultures, and societies seem to be the main antidotes available against the risks of individualism, auto-referentiality, and a revenge culture. Connectivity offers opportunities to nurture human generativity (Santi, 2021) in the service of better futures and cosmopolitan scenarios, contrasting the delusion of autarchical economies, the rhetoric of political nationalism, and the reinforcement of social polarization by way of competition/marginalization, which applies to education as well. The pandemia that occurred in 2020 brought both risks of isolation and opportunities for connection: it has been a paradoxical and even paroxysmal situation that has challenged us to think about forms of dependence, especially in instructional contexts. The stimulus for an inquiry that was carried out with 817 students at the University of Padova was the provocative title of an album by well-known musicians: “Declaration of Dependence.” The aim was to think about dependencies in the form of regular roles such as “study/student” that are important for our human existence, and which were profoundly upset by the “sindemia” (Singer, 2009). Our aspiration was to explore what it means to belong to a thriving university whose over-arching goal is to serve the dependencies of people in a generative community of future horizons. Our efforts led to the drafting of the “Declaration of Dependence,” a shared manifesto by the research group that enumerated a thorough list of the students' self-declared dependencies, and which was later shared with the university community in multiple languages. This led, in turn, to the use of the Declaration to launch multiple focus groups, which discussed these dependencies in a setting devoted to dialogue and the practice of complex thinking. Subsequently, in a workshop carried out in 2020 at the 20th Biennial Conference of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC) in Tokyo, we opened an international dimension on the reflections that had preoccupied us in the Padova University context. Here, the aim was to reflect on the personal, collective and educational dependencies of the present historical moment through the practice of community of philosophical inquiry, which offers a paradigmatic time and space for sharing, listening, questioning, and gaining perspective. The conference workshop offered an international group of scholars and practitioners from various socio-political contexts the opportunity to deliberate on how the pandemic has impacted both their local and the global community. Considering the new educational and philosophical challenges presented by the pandemic, the group expressed an urgent need to deconstruct established boundaries and return to “origins.” Invoking metaphors taken from the natural world (Roversi et al, 2022), an inquiry into the nature and scope of our fundamental dependencies reminds us that we are part of a socio-cultural ecology that is grounded and nurtured in our relationship with others. A community that understands its dependencies as gifts that call us to the design of a better future could in fact represent a foreshadowing of a better tomorrow.

University teachers’ professional agency for learning and leading sustainable change

ABSTRACTUsing social constructivist theories of adult learning and complexity thinking perspectives, a long-term, multi-tiered professional development (PD) programme was designed, implemented and evaluated at Qatar University. This qualitative study explored the systems of influence on 24 university teachers’ professional agency for learning and leading sustainable change throughout their participation in the programme. Within the context of educational change, university teachers’ professional agency refers to their ability to exercise control, take stances, make choices and exert influence in ways that impact their learning and leading sustainable change. Using multiple sources of data, participants reported supports and constraints to their professional agency within multiple systems. These systems of influence included factors within the personal, PD programme, department/college, and university systems. Findings revealed variations in university teachers’ willingness and capacity to examine previously held beliefs, design innovative pedagogies, and become change agents. The findings underscore the notion of emergence as an explicit characteristic of learning and leading change within and across complex systems. Future iterations of the programme, and similarly constructed programmes in higher education contexts, should consider the systems of influence on university teachers’ professional agency for learning and make concerted efforts to support their ability to lead sustainable change.