Navigating the Turbulent Waters of School Reform Guided by Complexity Theory

Authors

  • David G. White University of California, San Diego
  • James A. Levin University of California, San Diego

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct24566

Abstract

The goal of this research study has been to develop, implement, and evaluate a school reform design experiment at a continuation high school with low-income, low-performing underrepresented minority students. The complexity sciences served as a theoretical framework for this design experiment. Treating an innovative college preparatory program as a nested complex adaptive system within a larger complex adaptive system, the school, we used features of complex adaptive systems (equilibrium, emergence, self-organization, and feedback loops) as a framework to design a strategy for school reform. The goal was to create an environment for change by pulling the school far from equilibrium using a strategy we call “purposeful perturbations” to disrupt the stable state of the school in a purposeful way. Over the four years of the study, several tipping points were reached, and we developed agent-based simulation models that capture important dynamic properties of the reform at these points. The study draws upon complexity theory in multiple ways that have supported improved education for low-achieving students.

Author Biographies

David G. White, University of California, San Diego

David White is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Physical Science at San Diego City College and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His current research looks at how to best prepare low-income, low-performing, underrepresented minority students for college, how they experience the transition from high school to college, and factors that support or constrain their persistence in pursuing a college degree to completion.

James A. Levin, University of California, San Diego

James Levin is a Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on a distributed learning perspective as expressed in multi-mediator models of a variety of scales of learning, ranging from individual to organizational learning. He has developed several innovative models of learning, such as Teleapprenticeships, especially Teaching Teleapprenticeships, instructional frameworks that allow education students to learn within the context of remote K-12 classrooms. His current research looks at learning at different levels, including the district, school, classroom and individual learner levels.

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Published

2016-05-18

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 1 (2016)

Section

Research Articles

License

© Copyright 2014. The author assigns to Complicity the University of Alberta and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive license to the University of Alberta to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author.