The Emergence of Complexity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Situating Current Problems

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Locating Our Enquiry

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 3-12

   3. Agency and Expertise

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 13-30

   4. Issues Concerning Practice

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 31-53

   5. Issues Concerning Related Topics Such as Skills, Competence, Abilities and Capabilities

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 55-81

   6. Understandings of Learning

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 83-124

3. Infusing Complexity Through Co-Present Groups

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125

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   2. The Concept of the Co-Present Group

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 127-153

   3. Complex Systems and Complexity Thinking

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 155-183

   4. Complexity Thinking and Co-Present Groups

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 185-218

4. Dissolving Problems as Complexity Emerges

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 219-219

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   2. Fresh Approaches to Agency and Learning

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 221-247

   3. Fresh Approaches to Practice, Skills, Competence and Expertise

      • Paul Hager, David Beckett

      Pages 249-280

This book centres on a broadened view of complexity that will enrich engagement with complexity in the social sciences. The key idea is to employ complexity theory to develop a holistic account of practice, agency and expertise. In doing so, the book acknowledges and builds upon the relational character of reductive accounts. It draws upon recent theoretical work on complexity, emergence and relationality to develop a novel account of practice, agency and expertise in and for workplaces. Biological, psychological and social aspects of these are integrated. This novel account overcomes problems in current views of practice, agency and expertise, which suffer from reductive, or fragmented, analyses, based upon individuals, groups, or networks. In retrieving the experiential richness of human activity – often esteemed as the basis of generative and creative life – this book shows how complexity both emerges from, and is, a non-reductive feature of, human experience, especially in daily work.

“…an ambitiously wide-ranging volume, questioning the key tenets of respected approaches ….. and offering ….. ‘novel accounts’, which draw on features of complexity thinking…. …But they go further than any of us in their argument that: ‘whatever reductive moves are made, they ‘flow’ from holistic accounts of relationality which have already affectively engaged the purposes of a co-present group.’ This is the intellectual contribution that is built consistently and persuasively across the chapters.” 
Professor Emerita Anne Edwards, Oxford University

"Hager and Beckett have written a book that will challenge more commonly held notions of agency, practice, skills, and learning. Centering their argument on complexity theory or, as they prefer, complexity thinking, Hager and Beckett argue that it is through relations that we raise questions about, gather data from, and make working sense of the complexity that surrounds us. Groups then, particularly small groups, hold and implement agentive power. And what the authors call co-present groups—ones in which holistic relationality occurs socially, and affectively in distinctive places—“draw us closer to each other, and harness our normativity by enabling negotiability and reason-giving.” If your field of study involves anything remotely sociocultural in nature or if you are just interested in the complex ways we engage as humans with our worlds, you should find a place for this book in your library."
Bob Fecho, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York NY, USA

• Actor Network Theory
• Complex social systems
• Complexity theory
• Distributed expertise
• Emergence social sciences
• Evidence-based practice
• Expertise development
• Interprofessionality
• Lifelong learning
• Organizational learning
• Peer-based responsibility
• Practice learning
• Professional learning
• Relational turn social sciences
• Relationality social sciences
• Workplace agency
• Workplace expertise
• Workplace learning
• Workplace practice
• Judgement-based practice

“Hager and Beckett’s book is a rich, valuable and often successful attempt to shift our understanding of learning, performance and work to a new level. … Perhaps the positivism queried above has a bright side, too, in that people who are unfamiliar with fields like structuralism, or who have conceived an aversion to some of these ways of thinking, may be stimulated by concepts like co-present groups, non-linearity and emergence to reimagine professional and technical education and training.” (Steven Hodge, International Journal of Lifelong Education, Vol. 39 (5-6), 2020)

• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

  Paul Hager

• Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

  David Beckett

Paul Hager is Emeritus Professor of Education at University of Technology, Sydney. His books include Beckett & Hager (2002) Life, Work and Learning: Practice in Postmodernity (Routledge), Hager & Halliday (2006) Recovering Informal Learning: Wisdom, Judgement and Community (Springer), Hager & Holland (eds.) (2006) Graduate Attributes, Learning and Employability (Springer), and Hager, Lee & Reich (eds.) (2012) Practice, Learning and Change: Practice-theory Perspectives on Professional Learning. Professional and Practice-based Learning book series Vol. 8 (Springer). Paul is a Fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. In 2013 Educational Philosophy and Theory published a special issue celebrating his work.

David Beckett retired at the end of 2017 from The University of Melbourne, where he was most recently a Professor, and Deputy Dean, in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. As well as the 2002 book with Paul Hager, in 2010, Educational Research: Creative Thinking and Doing (O’Toole and Beckett) was published by Oxford University Press, with a second edition in 2013. He is a Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders, and a Fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.

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