Complexity theory and the enhancement of learning in higher education: The case of the University of Cape Town

Abstract

In the post-Apartheid era South Africa’s universities have faced serious questions about the quality of their student learning in the face of near impossible challenges. The University of Cape Town, widely seen as the country’s leading higher education institution, has shown remarkable resilience, however, in the range of initiatives it has launched to support and enhance student learning. These initiatives, designed with a common purpose, are of course intended to work together so that their effects might be compounded and realized in enhanced student learning outcomes. Drawing substantially on the power of compounding (which is itself redolent of the claim made by complexity theory that relations and emergence are crucial concepts), complexity theory offers unique insights into how and why things change – and also into how and why things remain largely the same or inexorably grind towards failure. The networked initiatives undertaken by the University of Cape Town constitute a case of learning refurbishment that is also well explained and understood in terms of complexity theory. This paper draws on concepts from complexity theory both to understand how learning might be enhanced in higher education institutions in severely straitened circumstances and to offer insights for education leaders and policy-makers in this domain.

Keywords:

• Complexity theory and learning
• University of Cape Town learning support
• higher education learning enhancement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Mason

Mark Mason is a Professor in the Department of International Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. For the past six years he served as Head of the Department; prior to that he was Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Education and Human Development. He is leading the launch of the Department’s new MA in Global Studies in Education; and has been leading a team developing a new MA in the domain of international education. While on secondment to UNESCO he headed research and publications at the International Bureau of Education in Geneva. At the University of Hong Kong he was Director of the Comparative Education Research Centre. Prior to that he lectured in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. He is a former Editor of the International Journal of Educational Development (Elsevier) and of the CERC Studies in Comparative Education Series (Springer). His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.