Week Four Blog

Write a reflection about what you learned about analyzing education/learning systems from the in-class activities and readings. How do you feel about the complexity? Are you starting to see a different picture of your own and other systems and what makes them up? Are you seeing any inherent challenges to understanding even small systems like those of an individual student?

I am a social constructivist as a learner and in-class discussion is very useful to me for understanding this complex concept of patterns in systems. We discussed about complex system and analyzed different characteristics of a complex system during in-class discussions. Eoyang explained the complex system in simple way with examples from real life. Eoyang (1996) defined characteristics of a complex system as:

• Indefinite number of parts
• Nonlinear relationships among the variables that describe the parts
• Feedback mechanisms within the system
• Behavior that may appear random, but which can be described by deep, underlying patterns
• Behavior that is unpredictable

Researchers and practitioners have identified a variety of patterns in complex systems. These are nonlinearity, unpredictability, interdependency, emergent behavior, autopoesis, boundary, feedback loops, fractal, neural network, self-organization, butterfly effects, and strange attractor. Eoyang’s explanation about these patterns  helped me to understand and analyze the complexity of systems.

Dr. Cox gave us an excellent example of autopoesis from her real life experience during the in-class discussion. How we adapt ourselves to our environment in our real life situation by playing duality. How each micro system behavior influences as a strange attractor for the transformation of a system as a whole. Autopoesis indicates that employees come and go over time but the organization as a whole retains it identity. Fractals are important patters that recur at all levels of a system. Fractals can be considered core ideas and values in educational system that guide the design of a system. Top-down control and uniformity are two important fractals that characterize our industrial-age educational system.

Reigeluth’s article was useful to analyze educational system’s complexity. Reading from both Banathy (1973) and Eoyang (1996) helped me to understanding complex human systems. Especially Eoyang’s definition of complex systems helped me to relate system thinking connection with any other system’s complexity such as the Donnie Darko movie. In this complex movie I have seen indefinite numbers of parts, unpredictable behavior, nonlinear relationships among other parts of the movie system. We have identified different types of micro systems that are seen in the movie as a macro system. We analyzed Donnie Darko’s characteristics of behavior and have recognized that he was experiencing multiple realities at the same time. He was to choose either to die or live during the airplane crash. He was delusional about fear of dying and has chosen to die at the end. But why did he choose to die even though he was fear of death? Is it to save others by sacrificing his own life? Is this his way of expressing his love for others?

During the analysis of Pattern Recognition by Gibson I am slowly trying to connect my systems thinking in this novel.  I am seeing a pattern of strange attractor characteristic in Cayce’s character which Reigeluth described in his article. Cayce is playing a powerful role as new in the workplace but it is too early to predict how the footage will emerge in the transformation process of the system. Is it the values or beliefs and cultural norms that function as strange attractors? According to Benathy (1973), “the most powerful strange attractors are core ideas and beliefs such as ownership and empowerment, customization and differentiation, and shared decision making and collaboration.” The core ideas and beliefs must become integral parts of the mindsets by participants in the transformation process.

The discussion that I enjoyed the most is Banathy’s systems-environment model of Human Activity Systems (HAS). Human activity systems exist in space and time. We discussed about change that may mean growth (change in quantity), development (change in quality), decline (in quality), and extinction of a system. Some system can be closed by the boundary but human systems are rather break the boundaries of their environment and interact with other environment through input-output. Feedback is an important mechanism to adapt and adjust input-output during environmental change process and to co-evolve with the new change in the transformation process.

References

Banathy, B. H. (1973). Developing a Systems View of Education: The systems-model approach. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Eoyang, G.H. (1996). A Brief Introduction to Complexity in Organizations, Circle Pines, MN: Chaos Limited. Retrieved from http://www.chaoslimited.com/ABriefIntroductiontoComplexityinOrganizations.pdf