Let the Chaos Ensue!

One of my favorite books, A Post Modern Perspective Theory on Curriculum by William Doll, presents chaos theory within the realm of educational environments. The most powerful for me is when he describes our chaotic educational environment by using the image of a pendulum swinging between two points, back and forth, back and forth. It is predictable, and in some ways comforting. Now envision a new point introduced and you will see the pendulum jolt erratically and unpredictably until it finds its rhythm again. Once it does, it will move in a predictable way again, it will find its rhythm, and a pattern will form. But when a new point is introduced yet again, now 4 points, the pendulum will jolt and move erratically among the four points until a pattern is established and order is restored.

Think of each student as his or her own pendulum moving back and forth between an infinite amount of points: learning, reading, writing, math, divorce, hunger, self-esteem, failure, success, relationships, abuse, fatigue, optimism, social aspects and on and on and on. In a school, there are thousands of pendulums (students) and each pendulum has an infinite amount of points (all of the issues and circumstances in a student’s life) it must move among.

Educators attempt to homogenize the infinite amount of points into predictable activities and regulations, because the differences among students are messy and sometimes chaotic. So we establish rules and standards, start times and stop times, right ways and wrong ways. There are lesson plans and controlled activities where the teacher does most of the talking. Students are not encouraged to take control of the class or their learning because we are afraid of the disorder that will inevitably arise. The standardized environment we have created make us feel safe and in control. However, this type of environment does not allow for authentic and engaging learning to take place.

However, instead of trying to regulate an environment impossible to control, we should be embracing the chaos as an essential component of learning. We must understand that the turbulence and quandaries that result are essential in the discovery and inquiry of a student’s acquisition of knowledge.

Try it. Use your goal or objective for the class period either established by you or by the state. And then allow students to decide how they will master that standard or meet that objective. It really doesn’t matter what the subject area is, we all have objectives that must be met. Present the students with the goal and then ask them how they would like to acquire that knowledge. Yes, ask them. In addition to simply asking them, provide them with a multitude of tools they may need to navigate their learning (laptops, books, chart paper, calculators, SMART devices, whatever you can think of). Give the students the tools to represent their world. Let the chaos begin. Then sit back and watch the magic happen.
I suspect the first few times we try this it will be rocky because we are all so used to having predictable parameters within instruction and within a classroom. Students may look at you like you are a crazy person. Many will probably say, “What are we supposed to do?” and then you say, “whatever you want to do to reach our over arching goal for the day, have fun!” They will most likely try to wait you out, thinking you have lost your mind or that this is some kind of trap. However, once the students actually believe they are in control of their learning, powerful things will take place in that chaos.

In this model, the students work harder than the teacher. The teacher speaks less and the students talk more. Learning is negotiated by the student and not by the teacher. Self-reflection, an essential component of learning, will transpire as the student navigates through the topic or objective. Once self-reflection is occurring, transformation will begin and the student will go from a copier of others, to what Bruner calls, a generator of one’s own.

I am convinced that we shall do better to conceive of growth as an empowering of the individual by multiple means for representing his or her world, multiple means that often conflict and create dilemmas that stimulate growth. ~ Bruner, Beyond the Information Given, 1973