Darren Stanley

Questions and Answers (8) View all

• Answer added in Pedagogy and Education
  47 Constructing a new course on complexity, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking
  By Darren Stanley · University of Windsor
  Darren Stanley · University of Windsor

  Hi Ray, I agree with you that I haven't been fully forthcoming in articulating which "complexity" I am "using." And, while I have quickly reviewed t... [more]

  Hi Ray, I agree with you that I haven't been fully forthcoming in articulating which "complexity" I am "using." And, while I have quickly reviewed the article you suggested I read (i.e., Song/Warfield), I find it lacking in detail, rigour, and scope. My impression is that it is more of an opportunity for the authors to talk about a "school" of thought that is their own. It is not a school that I recognize or heard of. I am not sure what should define a school, but there are, in the history of dynamical phenomena, many other variations that fit in with the rather short list of schools of thought. Long before Forrester, we have general systems theory (von Bertalanffy), cybernetics (Wiener et al.), self-organized criticality (Per Bak et al.), dissipative systems (Prigogine et al.), complex adaptive systems (many), complex responsive processes (Stacey et al.), and, if I might, comparative dynamics (Stanley!) - although this is not likely to be known at all by anyone! ;-) But your point is well taken because each theory comes with it own obsessions, underlying presumptions, attendant conceptions, etc. We would do well - I would do well - to think a little more carefully and clearly about these things when drawing a boundary around such a topic as complexity! To return to the article, however, I don't think the authors truly delivered on what was promised and the comparison strikes me as being superficial. This is really a piece about Structured-Based Science of Complexity (SBSC)? I did have a laugh at the assertion that there is a school called "indifference" to describe the work of a range of unnamed postmodernists working in the area.
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• Answer added in Pedagogy and Education
  47 Constructing a new course on complexity, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking
  By Darren Stanley · University of Windsor
  Darren Stanley · University of Windsor

  Thank you, Ray, for the article tip; I shall try to track it down because this topic will be a part of the course I envision. To push on, I wanted to... [more]

  Thank you, Ray, for the article tip; I shall try to track it down because this topic will be a part of the course I envision. To push on, I wanted to provide an update as to how I am doing. To date, as part of the course I am taking, I have thought about, engaging with others in my class as well, the kinds of essential ideas that this course would "cover." I have come up with the following learning outcomes that address the full range of Bloom's taxonomy as well as cognitive, affective, and performative domains: As a result of planned instruction and active participation, it is reasonable to expect that participants of this graduate course who successfully complete it should be able to: * Recognize, identify, define, critically reflect upon, discuss, describe, explain and analyze essential organizational principles that characterize systems, like: diversity, redundancy, distributivity, emergence, self-organization, local interactions * Characterize and classify different systems in terms of essential organizational principles that determine the underlying dynamics of the system * Find and evaluate texts and other scholarly materials on complex dynamical systems as defined within various disciplinary subjects * Analyze a complex system, interpreting how it works or doesn’t work in light of certain principles of dynamical systems Compare and contrast systems across different disciplines through the use of case studies and other forms of research as models of, and analogies and metaphors for, complex systems that facilitate and support a deeper understanding of complex systems * Design/create/develop a model of a complex system that reflects certain essential organizational principles of complex dynamical systems that permits one to make predictions about confirm the behaviour of a system Develop and foster diverse learning communities and working groups in which members collaborate, critique, and support each other in the pursuit of shared and individual goals * Develop and foster diverse learning communities and working groups in which members collaborate, critique, and support each other in the pursuit of shared and individual goals
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• Answer added in Pedagogy and Education
  47 Constructing a new course on complexity, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking
  By Darren Stanley · University of Windsor
  Darren Stanley · University of Windsor

  Dean: I'm not sure that I am endeavouring to find a disruptive approach...like my previous posted remarks, I think I am aiming to draw, through the in... [more]

  Dean: I'm not sure that I am endeavouring to find a disruptive approach...like my previous posted remarks, I think I am aiming to draw, through the inferential power of metaphors, analogies, and models, ways of thinking about different disciplines and the phenomena of study that could suggest, in productive ways, how these things are similar, in their underlying dynamics, and not completely different, although this may be true in substance. It's the underlying dynamics and organizational principles that I want to focus on so as to suggest a reason to think of them in ways that suggests living phenomena are more alike than we might imagine through dynamics and dynamical principles of organization. I've been thinking about, but most sitting upon, the notion of "comparative dynamics" for a few years now. Still playing with it.
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• Answer added in Pedagogy and Education
  47 Constructing a new course on complexity, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking
  By Darren Stanley · University of Windsor
  Darren Stanley · University of Windsor

  Good point...the proposed title for this course includes the word "systems". Personally, I draw from numerous sources, perspectives - and that might ... [more]

  Good point...the proposed title for this course includes the word "systems". Personally, I draw from numerous sources, perspectives - and that might not be a bad thing to do in this course, so as to highlight the divergence of views in the larger field itself. As for myself, I situate my myself in matters pertaining to learning, broadly speaking, and education, while drawing, through metaphor, analogies, and models, ideas that serve to inform and critique contemporary notions of teaching and learning.
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• Answer added in Pedagogy and Education
  47 Constructing a new course on complexity, interdisciplinarity, and systems thinking
  By Darren Stanley · University of Windsor
  Darren Stanley · University of Windsor

  Great ideas everyone. Thank you all once again. To go back to Elena's point: yes, you are right. But even before this, I have been thinking about "t... [more]

  Great ideas everyone. Thank you all once again. To go back to Elena's point: yes, you are right. But even before this, I have been thinking about "threshold" and "bottleneck" concepts- concepts that are vital/essential and that get in the way of understanding or otherwise slow them down tremendously. After this exercise, I form the learning outcomes and proceed from there - as I think you might do. So I guess I am asking for people' thoughts on what the essential concepts might be in a course on interdiciplinarity, complexity and systems thinking/design.
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