COMPLEXITY PATTERNING: A LANGUAGE AND STRATEGY FOR THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF COMPLEXITY COMPETENCE

Abstract

Education is the main site for preparing young people for co-generative participation with the emerging future. Therefore, teaching and learning today needs to support students to gain knowledge and skills for effective responses to the challenges facing humanity. Complexity competence is one such skill, comprising complexity perception, thinking, knowing, and understanding, as well as practical strategies for application. This paper presents a project developed and implemented by the author for the teaching and learning of complexity competence. A simple patterns-based design called Complexity Patterning was developed and implemented as a language and educational process and strategy, to provide a foundation for reworking students’ conceptual and practical engagement with and within complex phenomena. The patterning process can be adapted for any complex phenomenon of interest and focus, and has a low cognitive load, making it useful for a wide range of ages and groups. Complexity Patterning also forms an identity emergence approach to learning, and learning complexity, through using the relational becoming of identity as an experiential gateway phenomenon of focus. Initially emerging from attempts to disrupt reductive and linear temporalities in educational curriculum and practice, the patterns-based design was implemented with secondary students over several years in the developmental phase. The design and process were then refined and implemented with four cohorts of undergraduate students in a recent doctoral inquiry project. Complexity Patterning provides a sound foundation of complexity competence for practical application, as well as for further teaching and learning in a wide range of knowledges and disciplines. Through nurturing the capacity for co-generative engagement with complex phenomena, Complexity Patterning supports human emergence as attractors of coherence, as purposeful patterners of a healthy future.