Download A Complex Systems Approach to Educational Neuroscience

Simon Fuller STUDENT ID: 9301123 Advanced Qualitative Research
Educational Neuroscience:
Developing a Complex Systems Approach.
Educational Neuroscience is a field that may have only arisen in the last two decades, but
brings together two disciplines rich and distinct in philosophical and ontological tradition.
Developing an interdisciplinary union between these two fields, requires students to come to
terms with modes of inquiry and ways of seeing things that may or may not necessarily follow
traditional disciplinary paths of educational and neuro-scientific research.
This does not mean however, that the distinct research traditions of neuroscience and
education are to be discarded. Students need to be aware of the intricacies of each discipline
to understand how they can contribute to each other. This then stirs the question of how
education and neuroscience can come together. Another research/epistemological paradigm
like Mixed Methods or Complexity Theory may pose a path for those teaching educational
neuroscience. Students of educational neuroscience will most likely come from one of these
two disciplines, so they need a paradigm that will help them learn and be more accepting of
both traditions.
To be able to conceive a complexity approach, one needs to understand why the traditional
epistemologies found in education and neuroscience like social constructionism, subjectivism
and objectivism cannot cater for the epistemological and pragmatic needs of educational
neuroscience. To comprehend the limitations of each epistemology, we will observe their
understandings within a current issue in educational neuroscience: the under-diagnosed and
misrepresented developmental dyscalculia.
Developmental Dyscalculia
Like dyslexia, developmental dyscalculia (Kosc, 1974) is a specific learning disability
affecting roughly 5% of all people, but seems to be generally misunderstood by the
community at large (Spinney, 2009; Cohen-Kadosh & Walsh, 2007). Due to its complicated
traits, dyscalculia has been more difficult than dyslexia to address scientifically and
educationally. This has helped an unfortunate ‘culture’ to evolve around dyscalculia. For
example, there is a lack of confidence within the general teaching community that maths is
genuinely hard to teach and not liked by students (Askew et al, 1997; Bobis, 2000). This
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cultural unease about maths would affect the socio-educational dimensions (social
constructionism) of dyscalculia within the classroom. For example, students may hide their
difficulties and true feelings (subjectivism) about mathematics, and teachers might conceal
their confidence and ability to teach the area (hidden dyspedagogia).
In popular media and culture we tend to see dyscalculia mainly in its objective neuropsychological form. The difficulties surrounding dyscalculia are not only found in neuropsychological science (objectivism/positivism) , but cultural interaction (social
constructionism) and personal perception (subjectivism).
Such a cultural stigma and personal abhorrence around mathematics has helped a learning
difficulty called ‘Maths Anxiety’ to evolve (Zaslavsky, 1999). Maths anxiety is hardly
known in the general community, and yet it has a high propensity to be a concurrent disorder
to dyscalculia (Rubensten & Tannock, 2010). This disparity in community awareness and
knowledge levels about the entirety of dyscalculia may indicate which epistemologies are
better accepted or have perceived authority.
The potential influence of anxiety on both the confidence and ability to learn maths is
significant. From the objectivist view, this would potentially affect working memory,
(Ashcraft et al, 1998) which could result in an anxiety disorder (Chinn, 2009; Zaslavsky;
1999). The subjectivist viewpoint may support the emotional sensitising of basic symbols and
concepts purported by objectivism, but would investigate a lot further as to what are the inner
subjective feelings and meanings behind the ‘observable’ behaviours of maths anxiety. The
objectivist may dismiss these thoughts as ‘empirically unobservable’ (Guba & Lincoln, 1994)
but asking pertinent information from a sufferer of maths anxiety may explain their behaviour
that is a pragmatic option for teachers to take. Counselling and remedial teaching can then
occur, which can be viewed as social constructionist devices that help alleviate the problem.
However, it is wrong to see these devices as ‘curing’ dyscalculia as the disorder has neurobiological causality.
Policy-makers could probably help mitigate the social construction of dyscalculia, as
objective positivist science has demonstrated that certain symbol systems and cultural
contexts can influence the manifestation of dyscalculia (Dehaene, 1997). Students of the
Chinese symbol system for example have a far lower incidence of dyscalculia than students
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learning the Western symbol systems in the U.S. (Wilson et al, 2006). This demonstrates that
social constructionism can sometimes work alongside objective science (Nightingale &
Cromby, 2002) in describing the ‘social-cultural-psychological’ behavioural dimensions of
the disability. This is because social constructionism has been known to take on a weak form
that can ontologically accept some objective or ‘social reality’. The Western symbol system
for example, becomes a ‘social fact’ that has constrained the behaviour of (Lazar, 2004; Seale,
2004) children because of its reliance on many related phonemic and proportional (ordinality
and cardinality) systems. In comparison, the Chinese symbol system is all-encompassing.
The union between objectivism and social constructionism however, cannot effectively
describe the variance and heterogeneity of the disorder in each and across the Chinese and
U.S. populations.
Subjectivism and objective neuroscience may have the tools to describe the nature of
dyscalculia in their own terms, but neither is absolute in description. From the objective
scientific perspective, even ‘pure’ dyscalculia cannot be truly isolated:
As a research team, we found difficulty in attempting to identify children for longitudinal case studies
of ‘pure dyscalculia’. It is problematic, if not impossible, to isolate the factors which contribute to
severe mathematical difficulties. (Gifford & Rockliffe, 2008, 26)
Subjectivism on the other hand, may be able to fully describe the rich affective factors that are
current within an individual child with dyscalculia, but would then require social
constructionist and objective criteria to help universalize traits with other children with and
without dyscalculia.
Due to the complex nature of the disorder, researchers from psychology and neuroscience
have only started to effectively collaborate during the last decade. This has led to significant
advances (Zamarian, 2009; Ansari, 2010) in understanding the neuro-cognitive development
of mathematics. This however, discards or lowers the significance of the socio-cultural and
personal-affective dimensions of dyscalculia. Sufferers of dyscalculia not only have a high
propensity in having maths anxiety but other mental illnesses like depression (Gordon, 1992;
Butterworth, 2008). Although objective science has provided the indicators for depression, it
cannot effectively describe the ‘internal’ environment of the individual as objectivism is
based on the ontological notion that realities exist outside of the mind (Denzin & Lincoln,
2005, 9). Scientists for example, acknowledge that they do not yet have the capability to
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describe the creative and emotive mind of an individual (Byrnes, 2001; Howard-Jones,
2008a).
The label of ‘dyscalculia’ imposes recognizable features. These recognizable features are
important in both an objective and social constructionist capacity. Recognizable features lead
to a psychological diagnosis that leads to funding for special education support within a
classroom. Knowledge of these features would allow teachers to not only target learning
difficulties, but to construct learning, social and counseling structures to aid the student.
Subjectivism will highlight the idiosyncratic nature of the student in comparison to another
student with dyscalculia, but this does not address the complexity of hidden or unrecognizable
features. A counselor or teacher may unearth a lot of ‘depth’ about an individual student, but
this is dependent on the questions asked and the knowledge of the interviewer.
Does the interviewer know that dyscalculia is a developmental problem and/or is skewed in
intelligence? This would imply ‘markers’ of development that the student may not have
reached, but others that may have been reached. This development is non-lineal and multilayered. Objectivism will state that the ‘markers’ are recognizable features of behaviour, but
the ‘markers’ can actually mask underlying potential in an area. For example, the skewed
fluid intelligence may be ‘unearthed’ in creative art, telling teachers that this student has an
academic strength in creative art and an academic weakness in mathematics. The fine tuning
of neuro-cognitive sub-skills in creative art that hones in on visual-spatial (i.e. visual closure
and discrimination) abilities can greatly improve aspects of mathematics. We cannot forget
that Einstein had dyscalculia (Neumarker, 2000). He had a difficulty in arithmetic, and yet
had genius levels in visuo-spatial reasoning and abstract thinking.
Weisburg, an cognitive objectivist (1993) believes that creativity can only be enhanced by
increasing expertise and by increasing commitment. With Einstein, the expertise was already
there – it was latent. The commitment to overcome his difficulty, was determined by his
complex interaction with others, and the emergence of his self-confidence ( another latent
system). It is possible to see Einstein’s intelligence, personality traits, and cognitive
processes as an evolving systems (a specific type of complexity theory) approach being
affected by purpose, play and chance (Starko, 2005, 76).
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The phenomenon of dyscalculia therefore clearly spans multiple levels of analysis, from
genetics and brain ‘up to’ behaviour and culture. Importantly, understanding dyscalculia
requires bringing these different perspectives together. Emergent and corresponding ideas of
‘maths anxiety’, ‘dyspedagogia’ and ‘latent potential’, demonstrates that there are many
dimensions to dyscalculia.
The unequal disarray of information concerning dyscalculia has obviously confused many out
in education and the wider community. Dyscalculia is a significant area of inquiry of
educational neuroscience, and yet there is not a philosophy discussed that can fully cater for
the aetiological (objective scientific causality), subjective (personal motivations), social
constructionist (social behavior) and latent (hidden/emergent systems) dimensions of
dyscalculia.
If both culture and genes play a role in the manifestation of this learning disability, then anything less
than an interdisciplinary approach spanning multiple levels of analysis leaves us missing something
(Stein, Connell & Gardner, 2008, 407)
A philosophy that could incorporate interdisciplinary approaches and multiple levels of
analysis is complexity theory. This theory is a turn from the traditional reductionist and
objective philosophy found in the hard sciences. Complexity theory can be defined as:
A complex system is a system (whole) comprised of numerous interacting entities (parts) each of which
is behaving in its local context according to some rule(s), law(s), or force(s). In responding to their own
particular local contexts, these individual parts can, despite acting in parallel without explicit inter-part
coordination or communication, cause the system as a whole to display emergent patterns-orderly
phenomena and properties-at the global and collective level (Maguire & McKelvey, 1999, 26)
It is important to see if education and neuroscience can be defined under a complexity model,
and whether these traditions can co-exist with each other.
Acknowledging Complexity in Neuroscience and Education.
The brain is structurally very complex; brain function is non-linear and multi-modal. Like the
complex social/learning interactions within in the classroom, the brain also needs to be
described as a complex organism. An example of a complex learning for a child within the
classroom can be described as follows: Children hear words, generate words, see words and
speak words simultaneously, in and out of synchrony.
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Simon Fuller STUDENT ID: 9301123 Advanced Qualitative Research
Many paradigms within the field of education can loosely be described as being based on
linearity thinking and/or social behavioural determinism. These approaches however, neglect
the inherent complexity of educational reality. Students’ learning and interactive behaviours
can change at any time, as a result of a complex web of influencing factors from inside and
outside the classroom. Teachers subsequently, have to react spontaneously and effectively to
these factors. To overcome these difficulties, a first necessary step is to recognize that an
adequate theory of learning and education should take the complexity of reality into account
(Jorg et al, 2007).
In the field of neuroscience, epistemological variance is limited. The utilitarianism of the
partnership between education and neuroscience would incite a realist/pragmatist view from
the science field. A few neuroscience scholars like Davis (2004) demonstrate understanding
of the fact that learning states are not always internal but can be dependent on the external
states (interactions with teacher and other students), thus limiting the influence of
neuroscience. This position is close to the views of a large proportion of social scientists.
On the other end of the spectrum however, where a lot scientists lie, the highly objectivist
view would equate learning with the scientific term of cognition (Bruer, 1997; Pettito &
Dunbar, 2004; Bosch, 2006). If research in educational neuroscience stemmed mainly from
cognitive models, some questions of inquiry from education will not be answered. A question
like “How do individuals learn to recognise written words” can be controlled and conducted
under cognitive models, but not “how do individuals compare the themes of different stories”
(OECD, 2007, 248). On the other hand, if a neuroscience research finding was applied to a
classroom, the teacher may not understand the interactive complexity of the finding which
had been originally isolated and controlled within a laboratory setting.
This demonstrates that education and neuroscience both have research paradigms that cannot
fully cater for the complexity and rigour of each other. Consequently, for educational
neuroscience to mature, a new ontological view may need to evolve: the brain and education
need to be described and accepted bilaterally in complex terms. Why is this necessary?
Neuro-scientists and educators do have their own ontological/epistemological traditions. The
discipline of cognitive psychology may have crystallized some functional language and
concepts between education and neuroscience, but due to epistemological and pragmatic
differences there can still be clashes. For example, neuro-scientists feel that the
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misconstruing of neuro-scientific findings by teachers and the community (neuro-myths) are
some indication that teachers treat their field too simply. Reciprocally however, educators
feel that neuro-scientists do not understand the complex dynamics of classroom learning.
Understanding that both the brain and the classroom pose significant complexities that are
related and unrelated, demonstrates the need to re-evaluate what kind of philosophical
perspective can bond education and neuro-science.
..the parties to a common ontology may use different representation languages and systems. Ideally,
shared terms should be defined at the knowledge level, independent of specific representation languages
(Gruber, 1993, 2)
One of the most significant roadblocks with collaboration in educational neuroscience is the
lack of a common language to enable effective knowledge transfer between the joining
disciplines (Chiesa et al, 2009; Summak et al, 2010). In complexity theory, this would be
recognized as ‘adaptive tension’ where emergent dissipative structures may evolve to deal
with this new problem (Maguire & McKelvey, 1999). An example of this would be the need
for a new agent, like the much discussed neuro-educator (Gardner, 2008), to facilitate
effective communication and collaboration. If the neuro-educator fails, ‘adaptive tension’
will again force the neuro-educator to put measures in place to survive, or allow another agent
or instrument to emerge. This demonstrates that education and neuroscience under a
complexity model can co-exist, if ‘natural forces’ allow new essential structures to emerge
and bond the relationship.
Complexity Theory: The way ahead?
Complexity theory has been described as a meta-theory (Goncalves, 2008) or as an umbrella
concept (Jorg et al, 2007). As an over-arching theoretical framework however, novices and
experts can then bring their own ontologies when constructing solutions to complex systems
problems (Jacobson & Wilensky, 2006). This places a lot of responsibility on the researcher
to have a strong understanding of complexity theory as well as the discipline epistemologies
being used. Like in mixed methods, complexity researchers need to know that not all data
will converge. Careful consideration needs to take place of the data collection instruments
being used, if qualitative data is to supplement. It is very well to take an a-paradigmatic
stance, but how would you merge numerical, textual and linguistic data from two different
approaches?
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Simon Fuller STUDENT ID: 9301123 Advanced Qualitative Research
Many researchers are essentially careful in how they state one epistemological view and
position or embed other views to complement. Yet again, this is very similar to a mixed
methods approach:
We should accept that, whatever research we engage in, it is possible for either qualitative methods or quantitative
methods, or both, to serve our purposes .. What would seem to be problematic is any attempt to be at once
objectivist and constructionist (or subjectivist). (Crotty, 2006,15)
The mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative research cannot really incorporate
divergent research models like fictional data design which can be found in pure mathematics
research and complexity theory. Researchers really need to weigh up whether they want the
descriptive depth they can adjust to into their mixed methods approach, or go for the
simplicity of simulation found in complexity theory which could degrade the sophistication of
sociological explanation (Castellani & Hafferty, 2009).
Neural network systems can be seen as a ‘microcosm’ of complexity theory (Garson, 1998),
so the transition for neuro-scientists to complexity theory may be easier than that of
educational researchers. It is possible therefore, that mixed methods approaches may be seen
as an ideal tool for neuro-educational researchers to transition to complexity theory design.
Mixed method design provides a platform for interdisciplinary research, but complexity
theory then provides these researchers with trans-disciplinary skills.
Complexity theory can confront current research practices in educational neuroscience, and
challenge their inability to provide some detailed descriptions to teachers. For example,
current neuro-scientific research cannot fully account for the spontaneity and dynamism of the
agents nor environment of the classroom. Tommerdahl (2010) devised a model where new
‘neuro-educational’ practices can be developed in a linear or rotational progression between
the boundaries of the classroom and neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscientists and
psychologists would be involved in the collaborative process but at different levels. The
linkage of how communication and interaction between these levels would work is not
sufficiently explained. For example, what agent would initiate these linkages? How often
could you place a teacher, psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist in the same room, and
effectively collaborate together on a learning technique over a controlled period of time?
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Simon Fuller STUDENT ID: 9301123 Advanced Qualitative Research
Early Intervention is an educational process that complexity theory can evaluate. A
complexivist could use the situation of play to assess many things about a child at risk. Social
networking, conversational skills, and behavioural traits may be the ‘recognizable’ features
but investigating family history, attachment and mediation with certain toys and objects may
allow other ‘hidden’ behaviours to ‘emerge’ by using trans-disciplinary concepts of power,
choice and mastery (Turner, 2005; Alcock, 2010). For example, a child may normally
socialize with others and perform academic skills at a developmentally appropriate age, but
struggles when it comes to some children exerting power in some situations.
Complexity theory offers an ‘inclusive’ framework of contrasting philosophies (Castellani &
Hafferty, 2009). Within mathematics education for example, there has been a debate around
which is more correct, Piagetian-inspired subject-centered constructivism or Vygotskyianinspired social constructionism. To the complexivist, Piaget and Vygotsky were not at odds;
they were merely looking at two distinct levels of complex emergence (Jorg et al, 2007, 150)
This demonstrates that complexity theory can come under the guise of post-modern thinking.
Philosophers like Cilliers (1998) however, tend to qualify this by taking an affirmative postmodern view with the idea of complexity:
Post-structuralism has a more ‘playful’ approach, but this attitude has nothing childish or frivolous
about it. When dealing with complex phenomena, no single method will yield the whole truth (Cilliers,
1998, 23)
The appeal of post-modernism as a grounding philosophy for complexity theory rests on the
ideas that it confronts those theories which claim authority and continually questions our
practices of understanding (Filmer et al, 1998).
Emergent complexity will see the unravelling of not only new methods and knowledge, but
maybe new agents and institutions.
The more we learn about the human brain, especially in the early years, the less comfortable
we find ourselves with the traditional classroom model and imposed curriculum of formal
education (OECD, 2002:14).
Complexity becomes an articulating concept which integrates different perspectives and
dimensions of educational neuroscience and evaluates the structures that bind it. It is a
framework for research in neuroscience and education, going beyond traditional
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objective/reductionist methods like experiments which cannot take in the whole picture
(Cohen & Stewart, 1995). Current predicaments observed in issues like developmental
dyscalculia can now be given the ‘totality’ and ‘complexity’ they deserve.
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Simon Fuller STUDENT ID: 9301123 Advanced Qualitative Research
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