If you look at some of the descriptors of a complex adaptive system, these are
certainly not the descriptors of traditional, formal higher (or lower)
education. Emergence, self-similarity, self-organization…
doesn’t sound like the usual notion of college, does it? Indeed, it’s hard
to conceptualize just how a complex adaptive systems model of education would be
implemented at all. But perhaps that’s an indicator of failed thinking — must we
think of education as something to be implemented? Or is it something
that happens? Whatever the case, the authors argue it’s just such
a system that is needed to support environments where learning by doing takes
place and where engagement happens both inside and outside of a classroom.
