There is a growing consensus among academics, policy makers, and business leaders that the decision-making environment is becoming increasingly complex. In the past 24 months, the agenda for school reform in the United States has begun to shift from the basic skills promoted by “No Child Left Behind” to teaching higher-order skills that will prepare students to deal with everyday complexities of future life and work. A recent article in the journal Futures even argues that the futures studies field will ultimately become a subdiscipline of complexity science.
What are the characteristics that distinguish a complex phenomenon from one that is “merely” complicated? What are the skills that will enable us to resolve complex issues and questions? And how will we all acquire these skills? In a classroom? Online? Via the open university? Most important of all: What risks do we face if we fail to acknowledge and address the increasing complexities of our economic, environmental, and socio-political circumstances?
The presentation will report on the emerging answers to these questions and explore the long-term implications of growing complexity for the evolution of civilization.
Who should attend: Educators from early childhood to postgraduate and executive development, organizational development practitioners, and individuals seeking greater personal complexipacity.
What you’ll learn: Practical distinctions between “theoretical” and “applied” definitions of complexity, specific skills and aptitudes for addressing complex problems, techniques for assessing the complexipacity of employees, and alternative strategies by which society will seek to manage its way forward in an increasingly complex world.
How this new knowledge can be applied: Educators will be able to explain to their reluctant stakeholders the compelling need to supplant traditional rote curricula with process-oriented, twenty-first-century skills; recruiting staff will be better able to assess the complexipacity of new recruits and candidates for senior positions.; and individuals will be better futurists.
David Pearce Snyder is a consulting futurist and principal partner of the Snyder Family Enterprise, Bethesda, Maryland
key words: complexity, education, management, organizational development, AI, singularity
issue areas: Learning and Education