Constructing thesis chapters in the era of complexity

1. Constructing thesis chapters in the era of complexity Bal Chandra Luitel, SMEC, Curtin University of Technology

2. Summary • Meanings of complexity • Complexity and education research • Axiology, epistemology and ontology • Quality standards • Organizing thesis chapters • Managing the complexity • My chapter layout

3. What is complexity really? • Natural laws like Newton’s law or Kepler’s law represent the domain of order. Chaos was understood to belong to a different face of nature where simple — or even complicated — laws would not be valid. • In other words, chaos was seen not just as a higher degree of complexity or as a more complex form of order, but as a condition in which nature fails to obey laws. • Even more challenging was the observation that natural systems seem to have no difficulty switching from one state into the other, from laminar flow into turbulent flow, from a regular heart beat into a fibrillating heart beat, from predictability into unpredictability (Peitgen, Jürgens, & Saupe, 2004).

4. What is complexity really? • Primarily the notion of complexity represents an existence of adversaries interdependently. They can be: • Order and Chaos • Predictability and Unpredictability • Certainty and Uncertainty • Linear and Nonlinear • Mechanical and Organic • Regular and Irregular • Structural and Open • Pre-determined and Emergent

5. Complexity science • It is different from the Enlightenment science. • It combines several areas of research including cybernetics, systems theory, artificial intelligence and nonlinear dynamics. • Complexity science is an approach to understanding social and natural worlds through systems that operate at higher levels. • It recognizes the fact that part of the world we live and act is not ordered, planned and pre-determined. (Davis & Simmt, 2003)

6. Complexity and educational research • Axiological, Ontological and Epistemological, pluralism: What is knowledge? Is there one kind of knowledge? How do we know? What are my values? What is to be known? What is the role of emergence in valuing, knowing and being? ___|_________|_____________|_________|_______|__________|____ Positivist Post-positivist Interpretivist Critical Postmodern Integral Taylor (2006)

7. Complexity and educational research: How does the world look like according to Complexity Science? Redundancy Occasioned events Crisis Emergent Aesthetics Ordered world Adversaries Collectives Partially Ordered world

8. Valuing: Axiological dimension • Who is doing the research? • How does the researcher conceptualize her/himself in the web of social/professional networks? • How will the researcher be as a moral person in the world? • What are the researcher’s personal and professional values? • What type of knowledge does the researcher value as a person and as an educator?

9. Knowing : Epistemology • How do I know the world? • Literal versus Metaphoric • Pre-determined versus Emerging • Scientific versus Artful or Arts-based • Decultural versus Cultural • Structural versus semi-open • Factual versus fictive imagining • Monological versus dialogical • Rational knowledge versus wisdom (Taylor & Wallace, 2007)

10. Relationship between known and inquirer: Epistemology Guba and Lincoln (2005), Taylor and Wallace (2007)

11. Nature of reality: Ontology Guba and Lincoln (2005), Settelmaier and Taylor (2001)

12. Nature of Being: Ontology • I and reality are separate. ‘I’ is invisible. ‘I’ is an object. ‘I’ is the means of something else. • I is socio-historical construct. Oppression, resistance and struggle defines I. • I is defined in the web of others. They exist therefore I am. • I is more important than others. I exist therefore I am. • I is only complete when it combines with higher holons. Kincheloe and McLauren (2005), Wilber (1996), Guba and Lincoln (2005)

13. Quality standards • Internal and external validity, reliability, and objectivity, rational-analytical texts • Historical situatedness, erosion of ignorance and misapprehension, action stimulus, rational-analytical-historical texts • Trustworthiness and authenticity, mediated texts • Arts-based criteria: verisimilitude, poetic, dramatic control, multi-layered texts (capturing complexity is possible here) • Genre-based criteria for performance texts: stories, ethnodramas, testimonio, testimonial and poems: texts with alternative logics (capturing complexity is possible here) • Emerging quality standards (Emergence is the hallmark of complexity science) Guba & Lincoln (2005), Eisner (1997), Davis and Sumara (2005)

14. Organizing Thesis Chapters: managing complexities • Diachronic versus Synchronic • Autobiographic versus Neutral text • Rhetorical versus Thematic • Pre-determined versus Emerging • Arts-based versus Scientific • Metaphorical versus Literal Taylor and Wallace (2007) Maintaining coherence through emergence|structured relationship

15. Organizing thesis chapters • The logic of causation may not be always useful in the context of complexity: Emergent events cannot be caused but might be occasioned. • A shift from prescriptive thinking to proscriptive thinking: An appropriate logic for complexity science is proscriptive. • According to complexity science, internal diversity, redundancy and interdependence are very important features. Perhaps, a reductionist logic may not be useful in representing the complexity. Davis and Simmt (2003)

16. My chapter layout Title: Theme(s) from my autobiography Overview (can be a self-conscious and a co-generative form of writing) Datatexts (they will be different kinds of performance texts) Layered interpretations Summary of the chapter (Some boxed texts will help represent my feelings of writing the chapter.)

17. Managing the complexity • Employing dialectical approach as an overarching principle. This implies : • that the researcher needs to make a balance between adversaries such as emerging and structured, fact-based and fictional imagining and so forth. (Balancing act) • that dialectics are developmental. The researcher needs to develop a new vision out of adversaries. This can be the researcher’s contribution to the field. (Developmental approach) • that the researcher cannot avoid alternative views about the issue s/he is taking into consideration in her/his research. S/he needs to explore alternative logics that help uncover further her/his research territory. (Alternative logics)

18. List of references Davis, B., & Simmt, E. (2003). Understanding learning systems: Mathematics education and complexity science. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 34(2), 137. Davis, B. and Sumara, D. J. (2005) Challenging Images of Knowing: Complexity science and educational research, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18, pp. 305–321. Eisner, E. (1997a) The new frontier in qualitative research methodology, Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 259–273. Guba, E. G. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005) Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences, in: N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds) The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kincheloe, J. L., & McLaren, P. (2005). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitativeresearch (3rd ed., pp. 303-342). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Peitgen, H.-O., Jürgens, H., & Saupe, D. (2004). Chaos and fractals: New frontiers of science. New York: Springer. Settelmaier, E., & Taylor, P. C. (2001). Wilber’s integral philosophy and educational research: Fleshing out the seventh moment (and beyond?). Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Fremantle, W.A. Taylor, P. C. & Wallace, J. (Eds.) (2007). Contemporary qualitative research: Exemplars for science and mathematics educators. (Dordrecht: Springer.) Taylor, P. (2006).Research paradigms: SMEC 691/692 class note. Wilber, K. (1996). A brief history of everything. Boston: Shambhala.