Introduction to Education as a Complex
Dynamical System.- Complexity of School Environments and Educational Contexts.- A Batesonian
Perspective on Qualitative Research and Complex Human Systems.- Emergence Self-Transcending and Education.- Opening the Wondrous World of the Possible for Education.- Towards the teaching of
motor skills as a system of growing complexity.- The Fractal Dynamics of
Early Childhood Play Development and Nonlinear Teaching and Learning.- Ergodicity
and Merits of the Single Case.- Catastrophe Theory:
Methodology, Epistemology and Applications in Learning Science.- Evaluating Complex Educational Systems with
Quadratic Assignment Processes and Exponential Random Graph Model Methods.- Looking at’ Educational
Interventions Surplus Value of a
Complex Dynamic Systems Approach to Study the Effectiveness of a Science and
Technology Educational Intervention.- Analyzing teacher-student interactions with
State Space Grids.- Nonlinear Dynamical Interaction Patterns in
Collaborative Groups: Discourse Analysis with Orbital
Decomposition.- Investigating the Long Memory Process in Daily
High School Attendance Data.- Educational Systems and
the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality: A Complex Dynamical Systems
Perspective.- The Symbolic Dynamics of Visual Attention During
Learning: Exploring the Application of Orbital Decomposition.- A catastrophe model for
motivation and emotions: Highlighting the
Synergistic Role of Performance-Approach and Performance-Avoidance Goal
Orientations.
Matthijs Koopmans is Associate Professor and Assessment Coordinator at the School of Education at Mercy College. His professional interests include the application of complex dynamical systems approaches in education, cause and effect relationships and nonlinear time series. He published numerous research articles and book reviews in peer-reviewed journals including Evaluation and Program Planning; Nonlinear, Dynamics, Psychology and Life Sciences, and Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity in Education. He is one of the editors of Chaos and Complexity in Psychology: The Theory of Nonlinear Dynamics, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. He earned his Doctorate in 1988 at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dimitrios Stamovlasis is Assistant Professor of Research Methodology and Applied Statistics in Social Science at the Aristotle University, Department of Philosophy and Education. His research interests are interdisciplinary and they focus: on methodological and epistemological issues of contemporary social sciences that improve theory building; on nonlinear dynamics (complexity, catastrophe theory, entropy, and related fields) and their application to social, behavioral and life sciences; on specific research endeavors in the area of educational research concerning neo-Piagetian theories, learning, science education, problem solving, creativity and group dynamics. He published numerous research articles in peer-reviewed journals, and he served as a guest editor in the Special Issue of Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology and Life Science (2014) focused on Nonlinear Dynamics in Education. He earned his PhD at the University of Ioannina (2001) and he also holds a M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from University of Hawaii, an MBA, and a M. Sc. in Statistics from University of Athens.
This book capitalizes on the developments in dynamical systems and education by presenting some of the most recent advances in this area in seventeen non-overlapping chapters. The first half of the book discusses the conceptual framework of complex dynamical systems and its applicability to educational processes. The second half presents a set of empirical studies that
that illustrate the use of various research methodologies to investigate complex dynamical processes in education, and help the reader appreciate what we learn about dynamical processes in education from using these approaches.