Using complexity theory to understand teaching: Re-framing perspectives from preservice teachers

Abstract

This paper is an exploratory analysis of preservice teachers' understandings of teaching as complex activity through the explicit use of complexity theory. Interviews with 38 primary and secondary preservice teachers enrolled in a one-year, graduate-level, university-based teacher education programme in Aotearoa New Zealand indicate limitations in the conceptual language these preservice teachers have for naming and understanding this complexity in teaching. Drawing on the concepts within complexity theory, we recast preservice teachers’ descriptions of teaching, offering new language for describing the emergent dynamics of teaching in relation to its non-linear and networked activity, working between predictability and uncertainty, and the necessity of adaptation.