How might cybernetic approaches be used to develop the sustainability of educational systems to meet the challenges of the future?

Abstract

The principles of cybernetics from Weiner’s work on the control and communication in the animal and the machine, as well as many more from the Macy’s conferences, have been embedded in some part in the teaching of many educational programs for decades. However, despite their continuing relevance to support education and knowledge development across fields, as global changes including technological development and environmental degradation continue at pace, we consider the provocation that cybernetic approaches have not experienced sustainability in many education systems.

Here, we consider sustainability of a system as the ability to maintain continuity, and interconnectedness of the systems components to allow humans, non-humans and the planet to benefit from the whole. The education system can be regarded as a system of complex systems, comprising technological, environmental, and human systems. Each of which represents a complex system with its own sets of boundaries, goals, requirements and values, and the interconnectedness and interactions of the ever-evolving nature of these systems form an ontology that shapes the education system as a whole. The difficulty of defining and measuring ways to maintain continuity, and interconnectedness of these components represents a roadblock to sustainability of education systems.

Could taking cybernetic approaches to managing the various system components while maintaining a holistic understanding of their interconnectedness and interactions help us to define, pursue and evaluate the sustainability of education systems? It could be imagined that like First People’s knowledge and pedagogical systems that have functioned effectively and continuously for millennia due to the value of the principles to apprehending the complexity of the world and acting effectively as an interconnected part of it, cybernetic approaches could also play a more prominent role in defining, shaping, deploying and developing sustainable education systems for the future.