Chaos/Complexity Theory and Education

Sciences exist to demonstrate the fundamental order underlying nature. chaos/complexity theory is a novel and amazing field of scientific inquiry. notions of our everyday experiences are somehow in connection to the laws of nature through chaos/complexity theory’s concerns with the relationships between simplicity and complexity, between orderliness and randomness (retrieved from http://www.inclusional-research.org/comparisons4.php). it is interested in how disorder leads to order, of how complexity emerges in nature. there appears to be many striking and eye-catching similarities between the new science of chaos/complexity and education. an understanding of chaos/complexity theory seems almost crucial to our general understanding of education and teachers’ and students’ needs within educational systems. chaos/complexity theory raises some very significant issues in an educational context, including responsibility, morality and planning; the significance of non-linear learning organizations; setting conditions for change by emergence and self-organization; the role of feedback in learning; changing external and internal environments(morrison, 2006); it emphasizes on the fact that schools and learners as open, complex adaptive systems; cooperation and competition; pedagogy; and the significance of context (larsen freeman, 1997).this paper tries to provide an overview of this science and how it can inform education.