Manchester Roundtable on Complexity Theory and English Language Teaching
Abstracts
Images of Complexity in the Practice of Language Teaching and Learning
Juup Stelma
This talk will explore, with the audience, whether and how the ‘images’ of Complexity Theory can provide useful insights into the practice of language teaching. Images include visual-everyday ones such as the butterfly effect and sand pile experiments, visual-abstract images such as fractal shapes, attractor landscapes and non-linearity, and finally less visual and abstract ones such as embedded systems, self-organisation and collective variables. Using plain language, the Complexity Theory meaning of each of these images is introduced. Next, ‘metaphorical extensions’ to language teaching are suggested for each image. For instance, apparently small classroom events - the butterfly flapping its wings - having big impacts, or the nonlinearity associated with students appearing to make a lot of progress one day, and then little progress on other days. The audience will be invited to contribute their own metaphorical extensions. The final part explores and invites discussion of the ‘so what’ aspect; i.e. what, if any, practically useful insight do these Complexity Theory images, and their metaphorical extensions, provide for language teachers and teaching, or language learners and learning.
Resisting Change: Using Complexity to Understand the Resilience of Traditional Pedagogy
Achilleas Kostoulas
In this talk, I will use Complex Systems Theory as an analytical lens to interpret the resilience of traditional modes of pedagogy in a language school in Greece. In doing so, I attempt to answer a paradox, namely why CLT appears to be resisted in language teaching in Greece, despite the hegemonic influences emanating from the Anglophone West. The language school is conceptualised as a complex adaptive system, which is embedded in broader overlapping structures, such as the local (i.e., Greek) educational culture, and the global English Language Teaching (ELT) professional culture. Drawing on complex systems theory, I describe some analytically useful properties which are in evidence at the school, including heterogeneity and self-organisation. Following that, I suggeste that pedagogical activity in the language school is driven by several intentionalities, which I define using empirically grounded examples. I further suggest that intentionalities may be viewed as products of the interaction between expectations and affordances in the system, and that they have generative properties (i.e., they can shape the system’s structure, and thus influence future activity). I argue that while some intentionalities in the language school are associated with the global ELT culture and thus privileged Comunicative Language Teaching (CLT), many others align with local traditional pedagogical traditions. Finally, I posit that the prevailing dynamics of the system fluctuate dynamically, depending on lesson type, the level of instruction, and as part of the year-to-year evolution of the school. Many of these configurations, I argue, are not conducive to the adoption of CLT. In making this argument, I show how complex systems theory can provide us with useful conceptual tools and a technical vocabulary for understanding and describing phenomena in language learning.
Complexity theories and language teaching practice – a compatible pairing?
Sarah Mercer
This talk will address both the tensions and the compatibility I experience as a teacher and researcher working with a complexity framework. Essentially, and perhaps contrary to the expectations of some, I have found complexity theories can serve as a way of bridging the gap between theory and practice. However, there are challenges of working from this perspective, which may lead us to fundamentally reflect on our expectations of and assumptions about the relationship between theory and practice in our applied field. I will begin my talk by outlining my understandings of complexity theories and describing how I have found a synergy between such frameworks and my experiences in practice. I then consider some of the challenges for research of a complexity-informed approach and raise some key criticism and challenges that researchers in this paradigm will need to engage with. I conclude by proposing a set of next steps myself and others will need to reflect on if we are to move forward with this theory in a way that is relevant for and of use to both theory and practice.
Exploring the compatibility of Complex Systems Thinking and Exploratory Practice
Susan Dawson
Very few experienced teachers would deny that the classroom is a complex and dynamic entity with many factors, both human and contextual, affecting teaching and learning. While complexity theory is being increasingly used to describe and understand the reality of teaching and learning in the classroom by researchers and academics, does it have a role to play in enabling teachers (and learners) to understand the ongoing dynamics and unpredictableness of classroom life and respond in a way that enhances the quality of life in the classroom? In an attempt to answer this question, I will begin by briefly exploring the value of CST to myself as a practitioner. I will then draw on data from a recent case study that uses the principles of Exploratory Practice (a form of inclusive practitioner research that focuses first and foremost on quality of life and understanding in the language classroom) as an approach to both pedagogy and research in an EAP classroom context, to examine and evaluate how this might further our understanding of the possible compatibility between complex systems theory and Exploratory Practice in relation to classroom teaching and learning/language pedagogy.
The Discourse Dynamics Model: Developing a complexity metaphor for ELT
Lynne Cameron
Complex dynamic systems (CDS) theory offers a powerful metaphorical model of applied linguistic processes, allowing holistic descriptions of situated phenomena, and addressing the connectedness and change that often characterise issues in our field(s). The Discourse Dynamics Model relates moment-by-moment activity with longer-term change, for individuals and for groups. The five-level model was developed for the study of the dynamics of metaphor and empathy in discourse (Cameron, 2010, 2014). It is offered as a possible resource for ELT, along with some methodological principles.