This critical qualitative study focused on what are the factors that contribute to high learner performance at a public school in South Africa. Purposive sampling was used and the data was produced via interviews with the participants (the principal, ten teachers, five ex learners and two parents) as well as observations of various school…

Language classrooms are complex systems, but theory often simplifies these processes making researching effectiveness difficult. Assemblage theory -- a theory of complexity in the social sciences -- allows us to examine complexity in the language classroom. In this paper, I present an account of the language classroom that captures the complexity,…

The understanding and use of systems has been studied in numerous environments, particularly among leadership and management. However, as yet it is unclear what people at large know about systems thinking, where they gained their knowledge, or how important the role they perceive it to have in their decision making processes. Through a mixed model…

A description of the communication behaviors in high innovation societies depends on the application of selected principles from modern systems theory. The first is the principle of equifinality which explains the activities of open systems. If the researcher views society as an open system, he frees himself from the client approach since society…

Dysfunctional relations between the family and other social systems usually play a part in maintaining refractory problems and chronic patienthood. Therapeutic interventions need to work at this interface, in order to create a collaborative team that will provide sufficient support to the family at risk. This way of working can be easily applied…

This paper suggests that community psychology may be going through an identity crisis because of its lack of empirical demonstrations of community intervention effectiveness, and an ecologically valid intervention research base. Although the majority of research in community psychology has used an individualistic paradigm that conceptualizes…

The education literature has not adequately considered the notion of change at its most fundamental level. This paper considers notions of institutional or social change from the ontological perspective of H. R. Maturana. The pattern of organization in living systems is defined by Maturana and Varela (1980) as "autopoiesis," a coined…

Research in organizational development and ecological psychology has demonstrated the importance of viewing organizations from a systems perspective. Organizational innovations are planned, designed, and implemented in increasingly complex and dynamic ecosystems. This paper presents a model of organizational change which was developed using a…

Social theorists arguing that economic development is a process of modernization claim that traditional societies will follow the patterns of transformation already followed by modern societies, and that literacy can help instill the necessary values. An alternative theory, developed primarily in Latin America, argues that the relationships of…

Educational administration, like many other social sciences, has traditionally followed the rubrics of classical science with its emphasis on prediction and control and attempts to understand the whole by understanding in ever finer detail how the parts fit together. However, the "new" science (especially quantum mechanics, complexity,…

Findings from a case-method study that explored educational administration students' perceptions of two administrative theories--micropolitical analysis and traditional social systems approach--are presented in this paper. Methodology involved presentation of a case to educational administration students who participated in group discussion and…

A new framework for designing qualitative studies is described to optimize the emergence, representation and presentation of insights. The framework, called Reflection Methodology, is presented as a "Conversational Paradigm" that includes four components--interviewer (researcher as participant); child, task situation, and observing…