Complexity and Wicked Problems in Education – Editorial Introduction

Joanna K. Garner, Karen R. Harris

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPLEXITY IN EDUCATION Vol 5, No 1 (2024)

A primary goal of educational research is to improve understanding of the systems in
which students learn and educators teach. However, for much of the 20th and early 21st
century, researchers have relied upon models of individual, school, and district level change
that characterize educational processes and outcomes using linear, input-process-output
frameworks (Opfer & Pedder, 2011). These approaches conceal the complexity of
educational systems by using research designs and data collection methods that simplify
and decontextualize phenomena and the relations among them, and do not consider
influences across levels of the system (Kaplan & Garner, 2020). They have also not yielded
guidance for researchers and practitioners who work in contexts where multiple programs
and interventions overlap and interact with one another. In addition, our field faces
epistemological divisions that reflect varying emphases on context and the foregrounding
of different units of analysis. Some scholars advocate for large-scale, randomized control
trials as a “gold standard” for evaluating the implementation and outcome of interventions
(Lortie-Forgues & Inglis, 2019; Maxwell, 2004), while others value design-based, iterative
approaches aimed at addressing progressions of dilemmas of practice (Sandoval & Bell,
2004). Perhaps most importantly, many current approaches to research overlook the ways
in which teaching and learning are inherently interconnected with other sociocultural,
political, and historical phenomena such as economic development, mass migration, and
technological advances that manifest in individuals, families, and communities, and that
support or disrupt education (Harris, 2018).