8 complex features of schools

This week, I met colleagues working on cross-sector educational projects at a gathering at Oundle School. The discussions returned time and again to the same slippery word: impact. There was much talk of Theory of Change - sometimes described using the analogy of stepping stones to success. However, putting together meaningful interventions feels - to me at least - more like stacking stones than laying a neat path to a known destination... and in our careful building, we should expect the stack to topple...to have to begin over... to acknowledge the inherent fragility of the pursuit, and that the end result might not be what we had in mind or could ever have predicted. Torturous analogy over.

The challenge is reconciling Theory of Change with the complex nature of much of what goes on in schools (and in students' heads). Having been interested in complexity as a mathematical idea since my university days, I have been intrigued to see the idea transcend maths in recent decades, finding applications in the Sciences, and more recently the Social Sciences. As a paradigm for understanding learning and schooling, it is now increasingly accepted and used by educational researchers. However, I'm not convinced that the ideas have filtered through to the sector at large.

To stimulate debate, here are 8 features of complex systems as featured in John H. Holland's excellent primer for this topic: "Complexity: a Very Short Introduction". 

To what extent do they describe your school / university / college / organisation?:

1. Emergent behaviour is "an essential requirement" for calling a system Complex. 

Emergence can be defined as a property of a system "where the aggregate exhibits properties not attained by the summation", Holland (2014)

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

2. Chaotic behaviour: small changes in initial conditions produce large later changes.

3. Adaptive Interaction: where interactive agents modify their strategies in diverse , unpredictable ways as behaviour accumulates.

4. Self Organization exists at all levels to a greater or lesser extent. 

5. Nested hierarchical structures are common.

6. "Fat-tailed" behaviour is observed: rare events occur more often than would be predicted by a normal distribution.

7. Persistent Characteristics survive in the system over time, these characteristics come to define key emergent properties. 

8. Perpetual novelty exists: cycles repeat and there is regular renewal.

If we do accept that a school has these features, then there are implications...

> interventions: how do we adapt a Theory of Change to suit a complex system , where well-meaning inputs can have unpredictable or even undesirable outcomes?

> school culture: what do you want as the persistent characteristics of your organisation?.. its DNA? How do you nudge a complex system towards that desired state? 

> Intiatives: what are our 'best bets' and are we prepared to review, change and adapt over time?

> are we willing to accept that some outcomes are beyond our control? What are the implications of this for accountability?

I've been reading:

Civilisations by Laurent Binet. A counterfactual history of the world, I haven’t read anything like it. 

I've been listening to: 

Rory Sutherland on the Diary of a CEO Podcast is a good listen, particularly around the impact of marketing campaigns.