Victoria : Hi everyone, we are Marta and Victoria from Spiky Teachers. Today we are going to show you the relationships that we have found among the complexities, relationships, schools as learning communities and coordination structures.
Marta: From the point that the school structures are complex and based on the complexity theory, we will start talking about the close relationship that exist between complexity theory and the connections that exist in a school (teacher-teacher,teacher-student, student-student, beyond the classroom and within the learning). Inside the different levels that form a complex system, such is a school, connections take place inside and between the levels.
Victoria: Through the connection within the learning the knowledge can appear in two different ways. One of them emerges individually, in which you link new experiences with existing understanding to construct personal understanding. As we can see in the text School as learning communities, this type of learning can be identified as incidental learning, what is a byproduct of some other activity and people are not always conscious of that they are learning. The other way emerges by groups, that consist on the knowledge that is exchanged between individual group members creating a shared understanding. As we can see in the text School as learning communities, this type of learning can be identified as informal learning, what is a particular way of learning which arises from the activities and interests of individuals and groups.
Marta: If this connections act in an appropriate way and like a team, the emerging knowledge will appear, so all the levels must be connected and cooperate to work efficiently, if not, new knowledge is unlike to emerge. Whether the new knowledge emerge, the diversity and redundancy will appear, understood as the continuous appearance of innovations that will cause prior innovations obsolete. Therefore innovation is an essential part to the extent of diversity and redundancy, such as for balancing randomness and deterministic order, what is the equilibrium that exist between the new forces that innovate and the forces that tend to maintain the educational organization with a traditional structure. These changing forces can appear for the teacher-teacher connection and beyond the classroom connection.
Victoria: Getting back to the complexity theory, as we have already said, is related with the connections within school, but also with the coordination structures, in other words, all the parts that take decisions within the school that are usually distributed at different levels such as the school board or the tutor. The coordination structures make a serie of decisions, measures and changes, in the way that the teaching, learning and an appropriate knowledge transmission, will be possible through the different connections previously said. Moreover, diversity and redundancy are related with the coordination structures because these are the ones that determine if a certain innovation is made or if the center maintains what was previously established.
Marta: All that we have said until now, depends on the learning context, because everything will depend on the school characteristics , the circumstances, the culture, the beliefs or the religion. Every member of the school help to form the learning context since the education and the learning that is received in the school will be influenced by everything mentioned previously. Therefore, there are no members more important than others because we all are a key piece for the good functioning of the center and the success of the learning.
Victoria: Once we have said this and from our point of view, we consider that it’s not possible to compare a school with an enterprise because we,as a future teachers, don’t pretend to create a product, what we want is to achieve that our pupils as well as all the members of the school develop themselves, that they learn and cultivate their own capacities.
Marta: We hope to have helped you a bit to understanding that in education everything is related and that we all must be an active part of it. Thanks you for your attention.
