Theorizing learning through complexity: An educational critique

Abstract

Ton Jörg has done a magnificent job in outlining a new way to understand the dynamics of learning and, more specifically, learning that results from “peer‐to‐peer” and “face‐toface” interaction. Jörg takes inspiration from Vygotsky’s ideas on the role of interaction in the development of higher mental functioning and uses ideas from complexity to highlight the nonlinear and “generative” character of human interaction. He introduces the notion of “bootstrapping” to better understand the dynamics of such processes and ends up with a view of learning as a process of “co‐creating each other in progressive experience.” Jörg’s main “target,” so to speak, consists of linear and non‐generative ways of understanding learning, education and human interaction. Jörg, on the other hand, presents learning and development as radically open processes and argues that because of their radically open character we should (re‐)organize our educational practices so that they will facilitate such open, undetermined and generative forms of learning and interaction.