Complexity, Adult Biographies and Co-operative Transformation

Complexity theory challenges the dominating individual, cognitive, and cumulative view of learning, by focusing on the co-evolutionary process that involves learners in interdependent relationships with each other, the learning context, and the broader system. Complexity theory contrasts disconnections and dichotomies by searching the pattern which connects individual and environment, mind and body, research and educational practice. In this framework, learning biographies can illuminate how different constraints shape adult learning and lives, and be used to foster transitional and transformative learning by enhancing reflexivity and re-connection with the context. This offers a conceptual and methodological basis for the involvement of adults in participatory research, and namely biographically oriented co-operative inquiry, as a form of systemic, experience-based method to sustain individual, relational, and organizational learning.