File(s) stored somewhere else
Please note: Linked content is NOT stored on La Trobe and we can't guarantee its availability, quality, security or accept any liability.
Towards deconstructive nonalignment: a complexivist view of curriculum, teaching and learning
Complex systems are open, recursive, organic, nonlinear and emergent. Reconceptualising
curriculum, teaching and learning in complexivist terms foregrounds the unpredictable
and generative qualities of educational processes, and invites educators to value that
which is unexpected and/or beyond their control. Nevertheless, concepts associated with
simple systems persist in contemporary discourses of higher education, and continue to
inform practices of complexity reduction through which educators and administrators
seek predictability and control. I focus here on two specific examples of complexity
reduction in higher education, namely, the widespread adoption of ‘constructive
alignment’ as a curriculum design principle and the similarly widespread imperative
for teaching to be an ‘evidence-based’ practice modelled on Western medical science.
I argue that a totally ‘aligned’ curriculum risks being oppressive, but that tactics of
deconstructive nonalignment can be deployed to mitigate this risk. I also argue that
acknowledging the complexity of higher education should dispose researchers to value
multiple and diverse concepts of evidence rather than reduce them to understandings
privileged by Western medical science.