Complex Responsive Processes: An Alternative Interpretation of Knowledge, Knowing, and Understanding

Authors

  • Darren Stanley

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct8812

Abstract

This paper offers as an alternative theoretical perspective to the growing collection of commentaries on and studies of certain complex dynamical phenomena—human knowledge and knowing. Specifically, this is an introduction to another complexity‐related theoretical framework known as “complex responsive processes” (CRP). CRP draws upon certain conceptual ideas from the complexity sciences as a source domain for analogies with particular characteristics of human interaction. The central concern is for how individual and collective identities arise, how such identities are related, and how they change. In this paper, an overview of certain key conceptual ideas from the complexity sciences in relation to CRP will be reviewed to situate CRP on the larger theoretical landscape of complex dynamical phenomena. In the end, this paper will examine some implications for such a framework on the ways in which certain aspects of human knowledge and knowing might relate to contexts of pedagogy: in particular, this paper examines the place of knowledge, knowing, and understanding in terms of the CRP structure of gesture‐and‐response or “effect” as opposed to “affect.”

Author Biography

Darren Stanley

Darren Stanley is Assistant Professor of Elementary Education (Mathematics) in the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario. He received his doctorate form the University of Alberta, and his research interests include the study of complex phenomena as a paradigm for understanding and framing aspects of health and healthy learning organizations, including healthy schools. Additionally, he is interested in the circulation of lived phenomena with complexity frameworks. As a teacher educator in the facultyʹs pre‐service education program, he is interested in the ways in which pre‐service teachers enact various pedagogical stances to mathematical knowledge and understanding.

Downloads

Published

2009-07-01

Issue

Section

Research Articles