Gaps in the System

Abstract

Deborah Seltzer-Kelly et al, created a most interesting symposium which was the basis for the Feature Article in this issue, (Re)imagining teacher preparation for conjoint democratic inquiry in complex classroom ecologies. True to the heart of complexity and post-modern thought, the article has selected a series of perspectives that, while compatible, cannot really be resolved into a single meta-narrative. I find that a very Batesonian approach in that Gregory Bateson (2000) believed so strongly in what he called gappiness. Complex systems and complex ideas, by their nature, cannot be easily described except metaphorically and when we try to get too specific, when we try to eliminate the messiness, we flatten the system. Metaphor, for Bateson and perhaps for this SIG, is the heart of description for complex ideas and, like Bateson, we should perhaps refuse to explain our metaphors. There were two threads in the paper to which I would like to respond: the fault lines in systems related to schooling and some places we might look for remedy.