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Education: An Ecology

Education: An Ecology. The Joy of Social Theory. Theory: Who cares?. Theories allow us to account for facts, explain relationships, make predictions, and plan. The educational world is complex. We need a theory that helps navigate the complexity. Why System/Ecological Theory? .

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Education: An Ecology

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  1. Education: An Ecology The Joy of Social Theory

  2. Theory: Who cares? • Theories allow us to account for facts, explain relationships, make predictions, and plan. • The educational world is complex. • We need a theory that helps navigate the complexity.

  3. Why System/Ecological Theory? • Old Paradigm: Reductionism • This involves breaking things down into their component parts. • Little emphasis on how one thing relates to another. • Although useful and important, you miss some crucial things

  4. What is a System? • An arrangement of parts that interact • This interaction makes systems complex • Complexity is where the action is

  5. Characteristics of systems • Systems have boundaries, but most systems are open • They resist change • Changes in a system produce unintended consequences • Great cliché: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

  6. Examples of systems • Systems are everywhere. • Almost anything you can think of has systemic properties • Kittens, people, universes, classrooms, schools, societies, etc.

  7. What you’re missing • The Big Picture. • Events: Past, Present and Future. • Relationships. • This is all about understanding Context.

  8. Thinking systemically • Complex problems that involve helping many actors see the big picture. • Recurring problems that have been made worse by past attempts to fix them, • Problems that affect many things • Problems whose solutions are non-obvious

  9. School as a system • The school consists of a lot of systems. • The school exists within the larger systems of community and society. • Communities and Societies are also systems. • Schools simultaneously affect and are affected by these other systems.

  10. Education as a System • Education is one of the major social institutions in our society (family, government, economy, and religion are the others. • Education affects and is affected by all of these systems. It is also affected by the culture of this society (more on culture later)

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