Lesley Kuhn
University of Western Sydney
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Featured researches published by Lesley Kuhn.
Educational Philosophy and Theory | 2008
Lesley Kuhn
Judgements concerning proper or appropriate educational endeavour, methods of investigation and philosophising about education necessarily implicate perspectives, values, assumptions and beliefs. In recent years ideas from the complexity sciences have been utilised in many domains including psychology, economics, architecture, social science and education. This paper addresses questions concerning the appropriateness of utilising complexity science in educational research as well as issues relating to the ways in which complexity might be engaged. I suggest that, just like all human endeavour, approaches to research emerge out of discursive communities and can be understood as self‐organising, dynamic and emergent over time. In this formulation, complexity represents one such newly emergent approach. I argue that it is important that researchers partake in critical and reflective discourse about the nature of education and conceptual frameworks, as well as about impacts and legacies of utilising complexity, so as to participate in and influence the ongoing emergence of educational endeavour. I conclude by suggesting a series of caveats for researchers considering using complexity in educational research.
World Futures | 2007
Lesley Kuhn
Complexity is introduced as a fitting paradigmatic orientation to social inquiry. A complexity approach is compared and contrasted with other holistic social inquiry orientations (systems thinking, cybernetics, and ecological thinking) and constructivist styles of thinking that have informed and guided the evolution of qualitative social inquiry.
International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology | 2009
Ann Packman; Lesley Kuhn
In this theoretical paper, the disorder of stuttering is viewed through the lens of complexity. The complexity perspective is a way of understanding complex systems and it has been applied for this purpose across a range of domains, including architecture, economics, sociology, psychology and, most importantly in the present context, health. In this paper we apply some principles and metaphors of complexity to explain the disorder of stuttering. Through the complexity lens, stuttering comprises a number of complex systems, within both the person and the environment, that self-organize in response to a disturbance in the neural processing that is thought to underpin stuttering. The complexity perspective allows us to see this complex disorder in its entirety and provides a framework for integrating research and theory. The complexity perspective also highlights the importance of early intervention.
World Futures | 2007
David Levick; Lesley Kuhn
This article explores an understanding of organizational management developed from the metaphorical application of complexity science to the field of organizational development. It focuses on the insights that fractality triggers in relation to an alternative way of examining and appreciating organizational hierarchy, and the subsequent implications to liberating creativity, ingenuity and potentiality of individuals working within the organization. Sites where such a fractal-hierarchy mindset appears to be evident are discussed, and the effects on productivity noted.
World Futures | 2007
Lesley Kuhn; Robert Woog
A complexity cosmography is introduced as construing a world that is self-organizing, dynamic, and emergent, and that comprises organic entities that too are self-organizing, dynamic, and emergent. Following critical reflection into the nature of utilising complexity in social inquiry, specific images, vocabularies and complexity-based methods and techniques as developed by the authors are introduced.
World Futures | 2007
Lesley Kuhn
Paradoxical images and understandings inherent in sustainable tourism discourses are identified as relating to two undergirding incongruities where (1) humans and the environment are seen as discrete entities and inherently interrelated, and where (2) humans and the environment are viewed as evolving over time, and as static and unchanging. To resolve these tensions, it is suggested that rather than taking an essentialist perspective, it is more useful to treat sustainable tourism as an aspiring evolving discourse. Recognition of human complicity in discourse construction is proposed as necessary for fostering greater circumspection: thoughtful attention to the circumstances that reciprocally give rise to our own evolving consciousness and existential circumstances.
World Futures | 2011
Lesley Kuhn; Robert Woog; Marcia Salner
Complexity, in conceptualizing life as self-organizing, dynamic, and emergent, offers evocative metaphors for making sense that are not bound to linearity or certainty. We utilize complexity as a conceptual framework in teaching related to various aspects of the humanities and social sciences (business, organization, and management studies, ethics, social and political change, health, spirituality). In this article, we reflect on our use of complexity in addressing the teaching challenge inherent in encouraging complex epistemic cognition: thinking about thinking through a complexity framework.
Systems Research and Behavioral Science | 2005
Lesley Kuhn; Robert Woog
Cybernetics and Human Knowing | 2002
Lesley Kuhn
Metaphor and the Social World | 2002
Lesley Kuhn