Towards a new learning science for a new culture of education. A trans-disciplinary complexity perspective

Towards A New Learning Science for a New Culture of Education A Trans-disciplinary Complexity Perspective Dr. Ton Jörg IVLOS Institute of Education University of Utrecht The Netherlands [email protected] Computer and beamer The question to be addressed is why ‘a new learning science’ is needed. History has shown the general problem of social sciences to become scientific in its method and approach. Various authors have emphasized the crisis we are in as a result of this historic development. It is a crisis one seems not very much aware of in the field of learning and education. To overcome this situation we really have to reform our thinking (Morin, 2001). Actually a rethinking of educational psychology seems strongly needed (Bruner, 1996). Only then it will be possible to get “closer to the complexity of the actual world” (Dennett, 2003). The real challenge is to escape dear old habits of thought about learning and education. In trying to build a new science of learning for education it seems necessary to take a synthetic view of a complex, trans-disciplinary approach. This approach implies a shift of paradigm. The shift needed leads to a fundamental process of rethinking: not only of interaction, but also a rethinking of the concepts of complexity and causality. Interaction, then, may be described as a fundamental complex, self-sustaining, self-generative process of ‘bootstrapping’ through interaction, with potential nonlinear effects in time (Bruner, 1996).