• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Visualizing Teacher Education as a Complex System: A Nested Simplex System Approach
  • Contributor: Ludlow, Larry H; Ell, Fiona; Cochran-Smith, Marilyn; Newton, Avery; Trefcer, Kaitlin; Klein, Kelsey; Grudnoff, Lexie; Haigh, Mavis; Hill, Mary F.
  • Published: University of Alberta Libraries, 2017
  • Published in: Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 14 (2017) 1
  • Language: Not determined
  • DOI: 10.29173/cmplct26053
  • ISSN: 1710-5668
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Our purpose is to provide an exploratory statistical representation of initial teacher education as a complex system comprised of dynamic influential elements. More precisely, we reveal what the system looks like for differently-positioned teacher education stakeholders based on our framework for gathering, statistically analyzing, and graphically representing the results of a unique exercise wherein the participants literally mapped the system as they perceived it. Through an iterative series of inter-related studies employing cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling procedures, we demonstrate how initial teacher education may be represented as a complex system comprised of interactive agents and attributes whose perceived relationships are a function of nested stakeholder-dependent simplex systems. Furthermore, we illustrate how certain propositions of complexity theory, such as boundaries, heterogeneity, multidimensionality and emergence, may be investigated and represented quantitatively.
  • Access State: Open Access