Education and Education Research: Moribund Fields or Dynamic Interacting Systems?

Overview & Synopsis

The complex field of education is often depicted as a static field governed by technocratic approaches to activities that characterise the field. Education change is equally viewed in such limited and positivistic ways and linear means-end processes (Hoban 2002). In such orientations to the field, educational research therefore, is about finding rule approaches and law like processes to enable change processes and renewal of the field. I argue that education, when viewed as a dynamic and complex system allows for change within boundaries and space that leads to meaningful and dynamic interactions between complex phenomena leading to open ended interactions and change possibilities that makes for a dynamic, self-renewing, rather than episodic bureaucratic change process. This in my view enables education activities to make meaningful professional and socioeconomic contributions often attributed as key functions of the field of education.