Abstract
The ontological shift to complexity thinking concerning teacher PL literature review. The chapter explores the origins and nature of complexity thinking as well as its potential drawbacks. Further, the shift to complexity thinking is reviewed, and teacher professional learning in complexity thinking is analysed, pointing out this lifelong journey’s inherently non-linear and messy character. Additionally, it talks about how complexity thinking is a comprehensive umbrella theory that guides the integration capabilities of teacher professional development.
Introduction
1.1 Background
One of the important elements in the education sector is teacher PL. Teachers can develop professionally through this process, offering their learners the best learning environment. From time immemorial many theories and approaches have evolved to explain and foster teacher PL but in different siloes. Thus, this literature review aims to elucidate this paradigm shift toward complexity thinking in teacher professional learning (PL). Specifically, it attempts to address several queries, including what complexity thinking involves, why it should be adopted as a holistic philosophy for understanding teacher PL,
1.2 Context
1.2.1 What is Complexity Thinking (CT)?
Complexity Thinking is a modern approach opposed to the reductionist and linear views, which are outdated. According to CT, views are characterized by dynamism, connection, and continuous change. Small deviations from the standard can have big impacts within this paradigm. Complexity thinking is a process that sees such issues as learning by humanity and education as involving system dynamics, not being simple machines (Jess et al., 2023). CT views these systems as made up of interconnected components, which organize non–linearly, resulting in both predictable and unpredictable patterns
1.2.2 Why Use Complexity Thinking?
Jess et al. (2023) focused on applying certain assumptions of complexity and ecological thinking to formulate a more suitable conceptual framework for providing teachers with sustainable professional development activities. Specifically, they focused on contemporary professional development challenges within physical education using physical education as a context. An ecological perspective was drawn upon, and some ideas from complexity thinking were introduced, which may influence perspectives on professional learning. These two themes were the key features that formed teacher professional learning as a non-linear, recursive procedure.
Recognition of “the initial conditions” of each teacher, such as level of skills and experience, defines where these teachers start from. Second, there must be a long-term focus on five professional learning drivers: socializing, sense-making, boundary crossing, enacting the organization’s cultural traits, and interpersonal relationships. The teachers must be provided with learning opportunities such as experiences that consolidate, challenge, and are creative to develop knowledge, skills, and relationships as the recursive process continues. Jess et al. (2023) contended that complexity and ecological views are important lenses to understand teacher professional development as a life-long, multi-faceted process influenced by diversity and drivers such as reflection, boundary work, and connection-making. This view aims to help understand, design, and improve the longevity of professional development in teachers.
1.2.3 Main Features of Complexity Thinking
Jess et al. (2023) define complex thinking as four main aspects: becoming, lived time, self-organization, and boundaries. Complexity thinking, people never stop being the person they have become, but it is an ongoing lifelong process. Becoming is an occurrence that happens in lapsed time and not purely along this line of linear time. However, lived time viewed past, present, and future as intersecting and overlapping, not separate and distinct periods. Moreover, this leads to another important characteristic, which entails being autonomous. Rather than plan, individuals and groups can self-organise in an innovative/emergent manner governed by simple laws instead of being pre-planned. Boundaries are everywhere, not just fixed barriers, influencing this self-organization process. Boundaries can be either hard or soft, and in these soft boundaries arise “rich interactions.” The boundary spaces are spaces of coming together for the generative and the creative. Transdisciplinary inquiry and ecologically informed practice can be useful in creating boundary spaces.
The transdisciplinary inquiry is oriented towards cross-discipline integration of knowledge leading to novel understandings. At the same time, the ecologically informed practice highlights tasks’ boundaries, individual traits, and environmental aspects constituting conditions for development. These four commonalities of becoming, lived time, self-organization, and boundaries offer the necessary concepts for approaching people and groups as continuously evolving systems. “Being involves issues with the fundamentals of PE as it contradicts the generalized depiction of a person outside the school timetable…which entails being more than a specific academic subject.” “Lived time comprises three separate events, which include past, present, and future
1.2.4 Challenges and Limitations of Complexity Thinking
According to Jess et al. (2023), there are some key challenges and limitations in applying complexity thinking to physical education (PE):
- Complexity recognises PE as a complex practice, and various meanings of complexity may be interpreted differently. The diverse ways in which complexity is interpreted make the development of one inclusive theory of PE through complexity thinking difficult.
- A prescriptive curriculum approach is still very much present in PE settings and is regarded as an effort to simplify complexity. This restrains the possibilities for thinking based on complexity concepts (Jess et al., 2023).
- Postmodernist perspectives in PE have fostered “camps,” which polarise rather than promote the integration of different views. The same disconnection impedes hopes of bringing unity among PE.
- Complexity does not directly predict. Nevertheless, it can assist stakeholders in creating a conducive environment that fosters emergent and integrated approaches toward PE but acknowledges the existence of uncertainties.
Jess et al. (2023) contend that complex thinking would benefit from recent innovations in process engineering and reconcile the divergent interpretations of complexity as well as factionalism within the discipline. The idea is to start dialogues leading to coherent and concomitant images of PE by developing boundary spaces such as transdisciplinary inquiry and ecologically informed practice. For instance, these methods are designed to create a dialogue between polarized views and develop fresh, cohesive paradigms of PE as a whole. Summarily, different meanings of complexity contribute to a disjoint PE theory because the experts tend to have differing camps, thus impeding the synthesis of information to formulate a singular vision of PE.
1.2.5 Empirical Studies Using Complexity Thinking
According to Jess (2020), learning is a complex, emergent, and non-linear process based on learners’ self-organizing abilities within defined boundaries. From this perspective, boundaries serve as those things that delimit a specific geographical location or social cluster. This implies that boundaries can be personal or relate to an individual’s immediate environment or task attempts. Learners organize within, surrounding, and beyond several boundaries as they integrate, question, and learn creatively through their non-linear learning journey. Through various negotiations of boundaries, for instance, playing it safe within boundaries, pushing around boundaries, or exploring beyond boundaries, learners can increase their learning efficiency, flexibility, and creativity. There are, however, problems since these borders also facilitate or hamper learning, which depends on how one construes and uses the borders. As a result, Jess (2020) says that teachers should see learners as self-organizers, specify relevant boundary constraints, and adjust them where necessary.
An article by Strom and Mitchell (2020) points out the integration problem of teacher pedagogical learning in their practice and how novice teachers tend to apply transmission-based methods. The authors suggest a ‘complex turn’ in teacher education by drawing on sociocultural and socio-material perspectives to elucidate conceptual shifts. The essence approach based on linear thinking has its roots in rational humanism. It leads to reducing every phenomenon into one-to-one correspondences to address educational inequities through it. Sociocultural theories such as the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), complexity theory, and rhisomatic theory are all complex perspectives of learning that view learning as interactive and system-based. Rhizomatic learning is an instructional design model that views learning like a rhizome in various plants. In rhizomatic learning, knowledge is made up of multiple networks of ideas that are not arranged in a hierarchal manner. It accentuates the role of exploration, connection, and flexibility for learning. Rhizomatic learning facilitates students to move through a networked space of data that involves multiple routes to meaning-making. Teaching is a product of human beings, not machines and discourse, necessitating a continuous interplay between practice and learning.
Complexity theory involves an approach of transformation in education whereby change, evolution, adaptability, and growth serve as vital requirements for sustaining life. Instead of adopting a linear, predictable, and reductionist approach, an organic (non-linear) and holistic perspective is followed (Morrison, 2008). According to the theory, feedback, connectedness, and self-organisation generate novel types of more complex life forms. Families, teachers, peer groups, as well as the larger societies with which children are connected during their time at school, link up. On the other hand, in linking other teachers, support services provided, and the policymakers, teachers are connected with during their time at work. As complexity theory emphasizes a bottom-up approach toward development, it emphasises local and institutional decision-making, child-centredness, learning by experience, and non-linear learning. Dynamic, emergent, relational, rich, autocatalytic, self-organized, and existentially realized by the participants. It also questions empirical and positivist research in education, arguing for the fusion of traditional analytic frames into an eco-system/web oriented around some theme.
Cilliers (2002) examines the nature of complexity from its philosophical and scientific dimensions. According to the author, postmodern theory does not equate directly to relativism but is just a sign of having an innate understanding of complexities. Cillier employs language models formulated from the works of Saussure and Derrida in coming up with the idea of “distributed representation.” By combining the findings of complexity and computational theory with the perspectives of Derrida and Lyotard, the book tries to address the challenges facing contemporary thinking. Finally, Cilliers criticizes an analytic approach and its usage for coping with complexity. He underlines that model-building stresses representational and self-organizational approaches over analytical ones.
Complexity thinking in education was examined by Davis and Sumara (2014). The authors suggest that complexity represents a new worldview where truth emerges from an exchange. Complexity science is rooted in chaos theory, quantum physics, and living systems theory. It stems from our conceptualization of the universe. It looks at the changeover from one type of science known as complex science to another through a fractal geometry describing the form of complex science. Further, the writers propose a mechanism for establishing cross-cutting activities and six essential criteria for developing opportunities in complex systems. The authors contend that it is high time to substitute the old ” divide and conquer” methodology with “the continuous transformation of knowers, as this process has its internal meaning of “knowing.” The study by Davis and Sumaru argues for complexity thinking as a key ingredient in teacher education, explaining how things are more than simple cause-effect relations. The authors propose three phases of complexity-oriented research, Complexity 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 that resonate well with formal education initiatives. They also point out the development of ‘learning’ and ‘learners’ concepts and explain how vital it is to consider all organizations levels. The authors maintain that teacher education must be concerned with learning about learning, not “learner,” as well as an ‘interdisciplinary’ approach in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs.
Osberg and Gert Biesta (2010) state that there is a lack of a coherent “complexity theory” to unravel the mysteries of the world.” The authors have introduced the notion of critical complexity, where a part of their thesis deals with the politics of complexity in education. The division of “general” and “restricted” indicates a domain of complexity. Complexity theory questions rationalism-based viewpoints of modern sciences; it is about events that, for an open system, entail preserving cohesiveness as a continuous process of self-organization. The complexity reduction in education can also be directed prospectively or retrospectively to enable an expectation of assessment that contributes to the reduction.
Sumara and Davis (2009) point out that educational concerns are transphenomenal, educational actions are linked together, recognising mutual duty and involvement in the instructional process. and educational project is pragmatically oriented. Beyond transcendental, the complex nature of educational phenomena involves researchers’ complicity. In particular, their study focuses on multi-layered complex events and how it applies to teachers of inner-city schools. The significance of action is evident in both action research and complexity theory, which aim at creating a positive change in society.
Keay et al., 2018, highlight the complexity and ecological thinking for teachers’ long-term professional learning in PPE. This paper discusses these contemporary professional learning challenges and offers a conceptual framework given their issues. For example, the authors highlight that generalist class teachers need to be able to plan PPE experiences that are compatible with children’s learning when it is considered self-organised, emergent, and iterative. The authors suggest an ecologically informed professional learning model in which teachers are guided in developing, conducting, and evaluating experiences for children’s learning. It also shows how personal or local limits affect teacher practice and why they need external assistance to adopt new educational ideals.
Davis et al. (2008) studied engaging minds in teaching in complex times—understandings, knowledge roots, perceptions, understanding frames, structures, and contexts. The paper also talks about the frame of teaching, challenges, inclusive and critical perspectives, and the conditions for teaching. Through their discussion about what they consider an alternative pedagogy to formal education, the authors try to unsettle popular beliefs about formal education and seek to resurrect forgotten or repressed consciousness about knowing, learning, and teaching. The book discusses essential knowledge in education and how the orthodoxy of curricula has been a culture-sustaining norm rather than an innovating one. Transdisciplinarity and ethnosphere comprise diverse cultural traditions and deep-rooted know-how based on place. Transdisciplinarity indicates an approach that goes beyond disciplinary limits, combining knowledge and methods of several disciplines to tackle complexity. It promotes interdisciplinary cooperation, leading to an understanding beyond specialized limits. Transdisciplinarity is intended to synthesize knowledge to provide an integrated understanding of complicated situations. Ethnosphere is a term coined by ethnobotanist and conservationist Dr. Wade Davis, referring to all thoughts, beliefs, myths, rituals, music, poetry, oral literature, arts, and all other attributes that form the cultural heritage of different ethnic groups. It includes various cultures and cumulative knowledge, skills, and manners that different tribes acquired throughout their existence (Davis et al., 2008). The ethnosphere focuses on protecting cultural diversity and acknowledging ancestral wisdom existing among different groups across the globe. In this case, the meaning entails an educational system incorporating historical practices based in certain locations or the cultural knowledge of local communities.
Morrison (2003) notes that Hong Kong has embraced the Complexity theory, which uses curriculum reforms based on five core learning experiences, eight primary learning areas, nine generic competencies, and five sets of values and attitudes. Three key reports from the Hong Kong Education Commission and the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council published since 2000 have signaled a move reflecting this new shift in perspective. The connectedness of schools, good communication, and teamwork are highlighted by complexity theory, which includes understanding diverseness, flexibility, and innovation. Learning in the complex curriculum approach of Hong Kong entails self-organization, relationships, and feedback, which embrace multiculturalism, diversity, flexibility, heterogeneity, and voice among students and their teachers. Society and promoting a diverse learning culture within society are challenged.
Jess et al. (2023) stress about accepting complexities in PE since it is a dynamic field. It presents four commonalities: The development of being (time), living time, self-organization, and boundary for subsequent PE developments. Physical education and stakeholders of physical education represent a phenomenon that is intricately interacting amongst themselves in an emergent process of ‘becoming’ that occurs within lived time and space. They contest the depiction of PE as a limited school subject, stressing differentiation and flexibility. This is linked to the process of becoming in lived time whereby the complexity framework can support its application into PE for lifelong and life-wide learning.
Carse et al. (2018) argue that primary PE has been an issue of debate due to concerns over the safety and health of children as well as sports, among others. However, it has also led to a divergence of interests among various interested parties involved in the process. This calls for a shifting perspective’s agenda concentrating on positive bonds, maintaining a balance between similar features and distinct characteristics, self-formation, and recurrence detailing. The framework consists of three components: topics ranging from the elementary level of physical education curriculum and pedagogies, teacher professional development, and change in perspective from output to learning outcomes for teaching purposes. Complexity thinking helps grasp what dynamism means for primary physical education and suggests a future “shifting perspectives” program.
Complexity Theory in Education is a transdisciplinary method that examines the emergent nature of education research and curriculum studies, as Davis and Sumatra (2012) stated. This examines brain function, consciousness, intelligence, social collectives, and knowledge. In complex thinking, many phenomena seem stable, but this seems deceptive because of the different evolution speed of the subject than human thoughts. In a broad sense, it is a meta-discourse that orders and makes possible what must be said/done/thought. Education in our contemporary complex world should seek to embrace unthought-of and present space opportunities, creating possibilities for expansive options such as internal divergence, overabundance, proximity transactions, and decentralized management. Instead of interpersonal collectivity, they are aimed at collective knowing.
Mason (2009) refers to the Complexity Theory as a discipline explaining educational and institutional change processes. Here, emergence and self-organization are taken as key concepts. They suggest that many simple elements working under a few guiding principles can lead to the creation of new properties and behavior. Like chaos and catastrophe theory, complex theory has something in common with chaos theory and catastrophe theory. These authors briefly introduce complexity theory, touching on some of its fundamental principles, the relationship between the principles of education philosophies, and their implications for research and clinical practices. The complexity theory is important for education change. It will need research and an epistemology that recognizes reality principles. At this point, though, one must thoroughly analyze its ethical orientation, as well as that of education in general.
Jess (2018) indicates that DPEG at the University of Edinburgh has incorporated complexity thinking within its teacher education practices in physical education. A collaboration of primary teachers and PE specialists seeks to build a theoretical framework that can be used for curriculum development, pedagogy, and professional learning. At first, the DPEG faced problems incorporating complexity principles. However, it eventually developed common concepts and terms—complexity thinking for Scotland’s physical education teacher education collective (DPEG). The perspective of six members of DPEG is considered in this research work with a background that they were previously teachers in schools.
In OECD Education Working Paper No” 73, complexity theory is used to investigate the intricacy of education reform. Complexity Theory in Healthcare, Emergency Management and Ecology for Resilient Response Systems. It advocates for including multiple stakeholders, high public participation in disseminating information, and flexible policy intervention for transformation. Instead of the usual center versus periphery model, a view that encompasses the Cynefin and reframing from “did it work” to broader system change should be taken (Snyder, 2013). The paper also highlights the significance of identifying the Tipping Point and cascading effect in creating a much more desirable change. Successive reformation depends on only a few strong elements, which combine to have very effective results.
The Developmental Physical Education Group (DPEG) was the subject of the research conducted by Jess et al. (2016). The study used a self-study methodology and data from two focus group interviews in 2012 and 2014. These results show early difficulties of the DPEG members’ understanding and adoption of complexity concepts like emergence and self-organization in the pedagogical processes. The group grew confident in complexity thinking for a year and a half and established a common language to integrate such principles into teaching practices.
Davis (2015) explains the symbolic grasp of knowledge and learning in regularized instruction. The author notes that knowledge is sometimes cast in terms of the objects it can acquire, possess, and build, while learning is conceived as its assimilating process. Such views are consistent with perspective and correspondence learning theories, whereby subjective internal models are developed to agree with objective external reality. These are some of the theories that form the basis of an evaluative graded system of standardised education. This text highlights the prevalence of linear and hierarchical thinking in pedagogy. These philosophies are entrenched in our speech, language, and pedagogical arrangements.
According to Gandolfi (2023), there has been an increase in youth-led calls for meaningful engagement with environmental issues within England based on the recent developments in environmental education scholarship. There has been an increase in youth-led calls for meaningful engagement with environmental issues within England based on the recent developments in environmental education scholarship. England’s youth-based calls for action have raised calls for meaningfully engaging in the environmental education scholarship. Nevertheless, government responses have been even more discouraging, with the Department of Education originally not letting teachers and schools talk about environmental issues. Fifteen English teachers were involved in a study where they expressed views on using Utopia in environmental education. Most teachers joined the cause of environmental issues late in life without many personal environmental experiences or a specific “environmental identity.” Overcoming those obstacles requires each teacher to take over their CPD towards environmental teaching as it should be for all the teachers from any school cycle and specialized subjects. The study further emphasizes the need for spaces and opportunities for all teachers to participate in environmental education for professional development.
According to Ell et al. (2019), Complexity Theory studies intricacies within and between systems. This is vital in comprehending how teacher education affects graduates, teachers, and the entire education system. This theory attempts to reason why teacher-education-graduates vary, why this does not cause substantial change, and if it does at all, especially concerning underserved or marginalised learners. While doing that, complexity theory has its theoretical difficulties, including dropping the monocausality approach for a multi-causal one. It is employed in three teacher education research categories: Conceptual, empirical descriptive, and empirical transformative. It provides valuable insights on education and training, but there are limitations, especially regarding predictions and morality.
Martin et al. (2019). Complexity Theory is an approach for understanding complex phenomena emphasising the dynamics of interacting agents and components in an inter-system. However, it arose in the 1950s and 1960s and is now known as transdisciplinary. The system was used in teacher education, showing how different agents and elements reconfigure systems. They comprise different agents or components, including districts’ curriculum, state standards, federal regulation, norms of interaction, and resources. Complexity theory allows us to understand how different systems, such as teaching-learning systems, relate. The approach has also been a basis for designing teacher education and professional development courses. Although complexity theory can be used in research and practice, there are issues of the ‘fit’ between theoretical tenets and educative attempts.
A novel model for professional learning via a personal learning network (PLN) that bridges people as well as resources to facilitate informal learning is discussed in Oddone et al. (2019). Notably, as the trend towards self-directed or interest-based learning gains popularity, the model demonstrates the efficacy of PLNs that may cater to the needs of autonomous, autonomous, and autonomous learners. The research examines how teachers learn together online and offline to cope with increasing complexity, rapid change, and high accountability demands. The connective social intelligence model allows autonomous web-based teacher professional learning as an example of the self-motivated and real agentic activity of collaborative learning in networks.
According to Ping et al. (2019), the teacher educator is significant in enhancing the educational standards and informing the learning achievements of preschool and adolescent-age young people. Nevertheless, few systematic studies have been conducted on their professional development. Most teachers join the profession having taught in a school or gained a college degree in their subject matter. Their knowledge base could be stronger, so many people learn while working through informal discussions of teaching issues with their colleagues and trial and error with new ideas. These are highly varied professionals who play varied roles, for instance, teachers of teachers, researchers, coaches, gatekeepers, brokers, and curriculum developers. Professional learning has established itself as a distinctive area of research characterized by an increased number of publications over this period.
Reviewing four important educational journals, Sancar et al. (2021) propose a new paradigm for PD to teachers. As a result, the authors noted that the elements comprising PD must entail assessments, research scale, duration of the process, range of it, delivery, context, helping/controlling, and cooperation. Such a formulation aims to explain what PD means and how it should be used. Much educational literature is based on this topic, which considers teacher’s efficiency as an essential schooling factor for high student performance and good schools. The expectations of teachers’ skills and professionalism are very high. This is because of the changing educational environment requirements for providing excellent education, among others. This, therefore, creates a need to define the components of professional development (PD), examine its effects on teachers’ and students’ outcomes, and look at the Therefore, the authors suggest a comprehensive model of PD that covers gap in previous research on PD and provides other scholars with directions for conducting further studies.
Complexity theory, a branch of modern public management, presents a sophisticated worldview. It came up from Newtonian models, which postulated that relations between individual elements might be known through dissection, prediction, and summation of outcomes (Eppel & Rhodes, 2018). The complexity-based paradigm considers the changing world and develops or establishes particular patterns of interactions between different actors to obtain specific outcomes. Complexity theory is important as it can be critical in explaining the social world behind public management’s policy-making and core processes. It is imperative for the theoretical formulation and guideline development on public management aspects in modern governance and a better approach to change management in the public sphere. Complexity theory has helped us understand public policy and management for many years. There needs to be more clarity on sustainability and resilience.
As technological innovations lead to a more complex working environment, there is an increase in the complexity of science across different fields. The complexity of organizations precludes the use of ordinary linear observation techniques. On the other hand, critics have claimed that contemporary project management tools are reductionist rather than suitable for single projects (Turner & Baker, 2019). In this regard, “complex” as well as “adaptive” systems (CAS) are called for to understand such systems better. Complementing systems theory with CAS may provide tools to deal with complexity in social sciences theory, focusing on self-organization through dynamics, interactions, and feedback of heterogeneous components. The Kurtz and Snowden Cynefin framework simplifies organisational complexity and aids decision-making, perspective-taking, and conflict resolution.
According to Močinić and Piršl (2019), teachers’ education and professional development have much to contribute to better accessibility, flexibility, and quality of education systems. Education policies at all levels worldwide should mainly concentrate on teachers’ competencies. Initial teacher education needs a paradigm switch during the modern era through overhauling teacher education programs’ structures and operations. For this reason, key competencies in teacher education hold crucial significance in preparing future generations of students for active participation and shaping a democratic and pluralistic society. This has triggered extensive debates concerning core competencies for future teachers within the Bologna process.
As per Borgeus (2019), the Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) field has changed from the process–product philosophy of language education to a more personal-centered way. Initially, SLTE concerned itself with teachers’ training and competencies with short-term programs and separating First Language Teachers from Second Language Teachers. From 1980, the focus of interest in the field switched to learning and the concept of the teacher, while the expression “second language” came to mean English as a second, foreign, or additional language. SLTE started comprehending teacher development in terms of complex, chaotic systems corresponding to ecological approaches to language education. Complexity theory may provide new ways of thinking about the field as a place for changing teacher education programs. In order to bring forth complex teachers, teacher educators ought to focus on advising in language studies, adding the emotional facets into the norm of learning and teaching, as well as comprehending eclectics in advanced language pedagogies.
This study explores the professional identity of university teachers in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) at a higher educational level within the Chinese context (Gong et al., 2021). This study explores the professional identity of university teachers in PETE within the Chinese context at a higher educational level. This study focuses on the professional identity development process among Chinese PETE students. The article also emphasizes their identity perception in occupational settings, role performance, and professional identity formation. Most Chinese teacher educators needed to gain previous teaching experience, making their context unique. Teachers from higher education institutions should go to school and great teachers to universities for better education quality improvement. The most salient reasons for shaping professional identity are understanding one’s identity working context, and communicating with professional teachers.
Weinberger (2018) explores student teachers’ perception of research and practice relation, showing the gap between their comprehension of the association between research–and practice. Professional Education is normally the translation of science-based knowledge into a solution to real educational problems, especially within the context of traditional universities. This dichotomy is also present in higher degrees, whereby colleges have two different tracks for doctoral degrees. The positivists’ findings are considered superior to those from field experiences and academic-based research by the decision-makers of educational policy. Researchers argue that the practice teacher fails to make sense of research for practices, while the academic does not address important issues in the educational setting.}. The development of this gap poses some challenges in integrating the professional field with learning areas within academic institutions.
2.0 Setting the Scene for the Shift to Complexity Thinking
2.1 Limitations of Current Theories
The complexity of most educational settings, including physical education, is characterized by chaos and indeterminacy, which current theories fail to explain effectively. Such theories emphasize predictability and logic, making it difficult to acknowledge emerging chances. Moreover, their multi-causal analysis can miss out on the complicated phenomenon interaction. This situation may require more synchronization between the theory and the practice. As such, embracing complexity thinking, which is based on constructivism and encompasses becoming, lived time, self-organization, and boundary, provides a more comprehensive approach to comprehending the delicate nature of education and contributes towards an innovative vision that acknowledges diversity and inclusion (Jess et al., 2023). In actuality, the extant theories of teacher PL need to be more capable of accommodating such divergent and often conflicting beliefs, resulting in a lack of unity and an inability to tackle the dynamic modern educational system.
2.2 The Adoption of Complexity Thinking as a Lens
Complexity thinking as a perspective for PE is a paradigm shift. Jess et al. (2023) highlight how complexity thinking offers a richer alternative for PE than modernist paradigms in contemporary education, which moves away from modernism. It recognizes the complexity of PE and seeks to create a space where different opinions can coincide with such apparent dualities. Shift to complexity thinking appreciates PE’s dynamic and interdependent aspect that connects it to similar trends in many disciplines and professions. It offers an approach to assimilate current trends, connect opposing insights, and evolve toward a more unified and developed paradigm of lifelong and life-wide physical education.
3.0 Understanding Teachers as Complex Professional Learners
3.1 Teacher’s Role in Learning
Reflective practice is a self-study of teachers that seeks improvement of their teaching skills by taking advantage of available professional developing strategies and cooperation of like-minded teachers. They frequently undertake action research inside their classrooms on particular areas of curiosity and difficulties so that they might change or refine their classroom practices (Keay et al., 2019). People set different kinds of goals for themselves, both at work and in private life; they monitor their performance regularly and reconsider approaches for implementing new ones. Lifelong learners comprise teachers who constantly update their knowledge of relevant research findings, pedagogical strategies, technology, and other issues to ensure effectiveness in teaching. Their approach is not self-centered; it also boosts the learning process for their students.
3.2 Teacher Agency and Teacher Change
Complexity thinking includes teacher agency among its central aspects. It highlights that autonomy is a teacher’s right, and they should be in charge of their learning and transformation. Agential teacher is an active role that enables a teacher to influence decisions about the teaching and learning process and educational change. This is about teachers becoming catalysts of transformation in their classrooms, schools, and education systems. Agentry of a teacher involves advocating for innovation in teaching methods, improving curriculum, as well as changing policies (Keay et al., 2019). Action research provides them with a venue for change-oriented learning projects that enable collaboration with others and professional learning communities. Teacher agentry is an approach that enables educators to participate in the improvement of efficient student-based teaching models and thus promote the dynamism necessary for education to be relevant.
3.3 Self-Organization Within Boundaries
According to Jess et al. (2023), teachers go through the self-organization becoming process within the limits. Teachers’ self-organization under boundaries is crucial in education and professional training. These boundaries involve rigid and fluid components that define teacher-learner relationships and instructional designs. Teachers must tread carefully in these spaces to establish meaningful learning environments. Fixed boundaries relate to established structures, curricula, and institutional norms. On the other hand, flexible boundaries are about flexibility and creativity. In these boundaries, teachers’ ability to self-organize in order to develop rich interactions among students embrace an interdisciplinary approach and complexity-informed pedagogy must be considered. It allows the teacher to step out of his comfort zone, learn something new, and integrate the teaching with other approaches and disciplines for a more effective teaching practice.
3.4 Five Professional Learning Drivers
Teachers’ professional learning is driven by five elements that constitute complexity-informed drivers. The strategy involves enabling teachers to self-organize and participate actively in their development instead of subjecting them to external approaches. Additionally, they must promote reflexive culture among teachers, encouraging flexibility of vision and pedagogic practices (Keay et al., 2018). Finally, it is necessary to define and set boundaries irrespective of whether one controls them. The fourth driver comprises the dynamics that combine consolidation of entrenched routines, challenging the standard practices, and fostering innovation. Therefore, final links to new ideas and individuals compose the foundation of the integrated professional development process that transcends subject limits and embraces the wider education world. The complexity–oriented drivers highlight the need for adaptation, collaboration, and interconnectivity in continuous teachers’ professional growth.
4.0 Using Complexity Thinking as a Lens to Explore Teacher PL
4.1 Non-Linearity and Messiness
Professional Learning (PL) refers to the continuous process of teacher education, which is multi-faceted, complex, and continual. It symbolizes continuous self-improvement, for the development of a teacher is an ongoing quest (Jess et al., 2023). The process is characterized by unending exploration, adjustment, and observation in response to students’ dynamic needs, fluctuating educational environments, and an ever-changing world. Thus, teacher professional learning represents a lifelong commitment to improve, explore, and enrich practice by engaging with new knowledge and ideas about teaching.
4.2 Complexity as an Umbrella Framework
Jess et al. (2023) acknowledge that learning is a complicated and age-old issue. As such, they call for a shift to complex thinking, which they see as an alternative approach to understanding and handling Physiological Education. Their framework comprises four key commonalities: growth, lived time, self-organization, and limits. This gives an insight into the depths of the intricacies of PE and calls for a flexible, creative, life-long learning process. The authors emphasize the need for equilibration between straight time and lifetime; they support the self-arranging character of complicated programmes and perceive borders as transitory units, resulting in a more comprehensive and connected viewpoint on education.
4.3 Embracing Uncertainty
Complexity theory recognizes that any prediction of the future is based on assumptions that are, by nature, uncertain. Regarding CT, the future does not exist in a deterministic way or with assurance. Conversely, it understands that the future originates from the interaction of the factors, including human and non-human factors, not linearly and unforeseeably. Such doubt originates from multiple factors that might affect the possible occurrences. They involve individual intentions, personal history, actions undertaken, and external forces (Jess et al., 2023). In addition, luck and chance play a huge role in determining potential outcomes. Concerning CT, it is seen that CT considers the future as dynamic and uncertain. Therefore, CT denounces the linear assumptions about certainty and calls upon people to become flexible.
4.4 Four Complexity Commonalities
Complexity Theory introduces four major common points in the text.
One reason “Becoming” stands out is that it takes a non-conventional view of individuals and systems as dynamical, diverging from reductionism, underscoring adaption, and diversifying within education policies, especially regarding physical education (Jess et al., 2023). The second issue of “Lived Time” opposes the linear view of time, making it impossible to predict anything in the future. It urges everybody to find a perfect harmony where the linear idea about time would be incorporated into “lived – time.” Lastly, “Self-organization” acknowledges complex structures’ dynamism, combining predictability with flexibility and innovation. Finally, “Boundaries” are considered holistic components that define interactions of complex systems with accentuation on their creative and comprehensive nature. Taken together, these constitute a basis for comprehending as well as navigating through different complex systems and procedures.
5.0 Conclusion
This review has enabled an all-embracing understanding of the shift of complexity thinking in teacher professional learning. Thus, it brought to the fore the non-linear nature of teacher professional learning and the urgent demand for a more holistic and sophisticated framework. As a very relevant perspective, complexity thinking emphasizes such concepts as lack of straightforward nature, emergence, self-organization, and uncertainty, offering a potent approach to understanding and supporting teachers’ learning process. It links disparate theoretical perspectives and provides a more nuanced, integrated understanding of teachers’ PD. The trend to complex thinking offers a possible way forward for teacher education.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Complexity Theory
Source:
Appendix 2: The four complexity commonalities.
Source: (Jess et al., 2023)
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