Towards a new Complexity Science of Learning and Education

In this position paper we argue that the field of  learning and education is in a crisis and that the current paradigms in educational science are unable to adequately resolve the problems that are encountered in pedagogical practice. We believe that a profound understanding of pedagogical reality is necessary in order to have the ability to make recommendations for a transformation – improvement – of this reality. Present paradigms in the field of education are based on physicalism or linearity thinking, they neglect the inherent complexity of educational reality and therefore are not able to develop an in-depth understanding of this reality. To overcome this crisis in education, a first necessary step is to acknowledge the crisis and to recognize that an adequate theory of learning and education should take the complexity of reality into account. We argue that a theory of complexity needs to be developed, a new paradigm for education that can grasp the complex processes of learning.

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