Leadership by Learning Design: embrace complexity where it exists
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi36.1372Keywords:
complexity science, Cynefin, Learning Design, Sustainable Development Education, climate changeAbstract
There is a mismatch between established practice in learning design and the increasingly complex nature of the challenges the world is facing. This article connects learning design to complexity science so learners can be better equipped to create a thriving future. Learning Design methods have traditionally leant heavily upon the reduction of learning into consumable units of knowledge, skill, or understanding, that constructively align to create higher-level learning. Those structured and predetermined outcomes assume a level of order and predictability that is not applicable to all contexts, and even less applicable the more volatile, unpredictable, rapidly changing our world becomes. This practice places the learning designer as passive and complicit in perpetuating those challenges. Learning design can lean upon complexity science to treat learning as a complex adaptive system of interrelated and co-dependent parts. When the Anthro-complexity approach of the Cynefin Framework is applied to the design of learning experiences for climate action and decolonisation, this sense-making framework identifies opportunities to change praxis so that the learners are better prepared to address wicked problems in an increasingly complex world. These are changes that learning designers need to lead in an ethical and considered fashion.
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