Pedagogical Responsiveness in Complex Contexts

Abstract

Responsiveness and complexity are familiar terms in pandemic times. When applied to education, they take on particular meanings separately and in combination. This chapter shows education complexified by a number of factors, including governance and policy, system actors, knowledge claims, and information and communications technologies and artificial intelligence. These factors are agentic and interrelate in networked but non-linear ways that can be understood as general complexity. The challenge is to be pedagogically responsive within complex contexts. Pedagogical responsiveness is characterised by inclusivity and a focus on students, knowledge work, dialogue and relationality, a community orientation, and social justice and equity. It is enabled by collaboration and relational agency, epistemic engagement, contextual sensitivity, technology, institutional capacity and Ubuntu. We show that being pedagogically responsive within a restricted view of complexity leads to an efficacy, or "what works" approach, being pedagogically irresponsive with a restricted view of complexity leads to conservativism and preservation of the status quo. A general view of complexity with pedagogical irresponsiveness leads to inertia, but transformation is possible with optimal pedagogical responsiveness within a general view of complexity. The contributions of the various chapters to this volume gesture towards the possibility of transformed and inclusive global educational futures.