One of the key features of my thesis was my application of complexity theory – or at least some concepts related to that that theory – to civic and citizenship education. It’s a theme that I imagine I am going to return to quite regularly, and it is currently informing the work that I am doing in my book, which will hopefully be submitted mid-2020.
My thoughts have developed over time, too, and in this blog post I am going to try to explain how these different concepts interact, and how I will be using them in my book. Of course, there is much more detail in the book, but this description will help me get it clear exactly what I mean.
The first point that I want to make is that my work continues to be informed by popular education and critical pedagogy. I make no apologies for my argument that education is inherently political – in the way it is taught, in how it is taught, in who is taught and by whom. Indeed, there are few facets of public life that are as heavily influenced by political ideology as education. On that side of ideology, I argue for education to be truly democratic; that is, the purpose of education is to encourage young people to become truly active, justice oriented citizens. The best way to do that is by preparing them – no, more than preparing them – encouraging them to be active in their own communities in a local and global sense, from the moment they are able to do so. It is, naturally, an experiential and praxis-based approach to education. None of this precludes the need for strong literacy and numeracy skills (and art, music, PE and everything else), but I see this as fundamental to the aim of education – a collective good, rather than an individual competition. Of course, I am aware that, despite the spin, this is not, perhaps, a popular point of view in the wider community.
However, typical approaches to this role of education have largely struggled, much like their bigger counterparts in the world of politics. Education for democracy has become a splintered affair; critical pedagogy seems to have wandered down a theoretical dead-end, being attacked by critics from both the left and the right. Certainly, the criticisms about the emphasis on class to the exclusion of everything else are valid, as a re the comments about the efficacy of critical pedagogy in practice, especially within a wider education system that is inherently resistant to change.
It is my argument – and the central tenet of my book – that a careful application of complexity theory might allow us to navigate these potential roadblocks. To do that, I think we should examine the nature of active citizenship in the world today. There are three key features that I think are worth exploring: firstly, there appears to have been a significant resurgence in protest and civil action in the world in the last decade. This has included violent revolution, as well as peaceful protest. It has challenged authoritarian governments as well as democratic ones. It has been successful – and also not. The second feature is the role that young people have played in these movement. From March4OurLives to Fridays4theFuture, it appears that young people are not only involved, they are actively leading, organising and coordinating these movements. The third feature is the role that mobile technology and social media has played in the development, publication and growth of these movements. None of these things are particularly new – they have been written about in the past, but my work is seeking to draw them together and develop a framework for citizenship education.
In these three features, I argue that we can see a number of features of complexity theory. One notion of complexity theory that is relevant here is emergence, or emergent learning. This is the feature, that, in complex systems, new features or new learning develops out of the intersection between the relationships of different actors within the system. This is happening within this global culture of protest. Indeed, one of the key features is the way that protestors on one side of the world have learned protest tactics from each other. The are networks of protest movements, engaged in regular or sporadic communication – and even across what might appear to be radically different contexts or ideologies, they are capable of learning from each other and sharing that information with other groups. This happens within groups (e.g. F4TF chapters) and between movements (e.g #Occupy, Las Indignadas and The Umbrella Movement).
A second feature is the notion of distributed decision making and non-linearity. Again, this is present, especially in the way that new social movements are being constructed in the digital spaces. The social movements like Occupy are clearly, when compared to previous social movements, leaderless. In fact, that is one fo the central points of the way they are structured, and great efforts were made to establish a form of horizontal adhocracy, emphasising participation rather than leadership. This might be linked to the way young people are active on social media – seeking opportunities to crowd source and more control over their spaces, rather than being passive participants in a pre-formed process that has left them feeling ignored and apathetic.
The final feature of complexity theory that might be present is the idea of self-organising systems. In many way, this is the most obvious. Social media and mobile technology have allowed people to connect with each other with a rapidity and scale that is previously unknown. Of course, there are risks and dangers associated with this, but what happens is that groups are capable now fo organising themselves – with much lower costs required for establishing, managing or publicising this group. These groups can then link with other groups – increasing in complexity. This is a feature of complexity theory, too.
So, the question that must be asked, if these are features of active citizenship, how do we teach young people to do this,s o that all of them have the chance to be active citizens? Can we teach it? Should we?