Pedagogy, Culture & Society

ISSN: 1468-1366 (Print) 1747-5104 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpcs20

Complexity theory and curriculum reforms in

Hong Kong
Keith Morrison
To cite this article: Keith Morrison (2003) Complexity theory and curriculum reforms in Hong
Kong, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 11:2, 279-302, DOI: 10.1080/14681360300200174
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681360300200174

Published online: 20 Dec 2006.

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Pedagogy, Culture & Society, Volume 11, Number 2, 2003

Complexity Theory and

Curriculum Reforms in Hong Kong
KEITH MORRISON
Inter-University Institute of Macau, Macau

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ABSTRACT Hong Kong is embarking on curricular and pedagogic reforms

which replace modernist, Tylerian approaches to the curriculum with
recommendations that echo many features of complexity theory. The nature
of complexity theory-based curricula are outlined, and these are used to
interrogate three seminal curriculum reform documents in Hong Kong. The
article suggests that they embody a paradigm shift in curriculum thinking.
However, given that complexity theory is not without its problems for
curricula, a case is made for an eclectic approach to curriculum planning,
and it is this that is taking place in Hong Kongs reformist agenda.

Introduction
Hong Kong has embarked on a program of reform to curricula and their
associated pedagogy to break with modernist approaches and the
traditionalist, didactic, rote-learning and fact-based recitation practices of
learning in Chinese students (compare Biggs, 1996a, 1996b; Marton et al,
1996), installing multiple curricular reforms over a six-year period until
2006. A new curriculum has been developed, which covers aims and
values, curriculum framing, pedagogy, assessment and examinations,
social inclusion, organization of schools, collaborative planning and
teaching, school-based curriculum development, lifelong learning,
resources, implementation, and all sectors of education, from early
childhood to higher education. The curriculum is framed in terms of:
Five essential learning experiences through integrated learning;
Eight key learning areas, constructed in terms of basic learning
elements (knowledge, concepts, skills, attitudes and values);
Nine generic skills;
Five sets of values and attitudes.
A new culture in learning and teaching is envisaged (Education
Commission, 2000, p. 60), and reforms are proposed to assessment and
examinations. In connection with this, the Hong Kong Education
Commission (hereafter termed EC) and the Hong Kong Curriculum
Development Council (hereafter termed CDC) have produced three
influential reports since 2000 (EC, 2000; CDC, 2000, 2001). These
documents signal an ambitious and forward-looking shift in perspective
for Hong Kong curricula, away from a modernist paradigm and agenda.

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This article argues that the new paradigm in these documents embraces
significant features of complexity theory. The article outlines some key
elements of complexity theory, and suggests that it is a useful lens
through which to examine curriculum developments, and to guide
reformist curricular agendas.

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The Allure of Certainty

The allure of certainty is difficult to resist in curricula. If we know what
we are supposed to be doing, what it is for, why we are doing it, how we
are doing it, how well we are doing it, and how well it meets expressed
purposes and given agenda, then we have a model for accountability
which is sufficiently attractive for governments and policy-makers to
seize with both hands. Further, resting in large part on positivism
provides respectability for such a curriculum, whose pedigree goes back
to the natural sciences and is premised on objectivity; the discovery and
application of nomothetic laws; control and manipulation; generalization;
prediction; causality; and the focus on quantifiable measures of
achievement. In turn, the curriculum is objective-driven; based on a
standardized blueprint; summatively assessed; open to simple
accountability; prescribed/received/ reproductive; inspected, monitored,
audited, benchmarked, quality assured, performance-measured, and
measured by indicator systems.
Such a curriculum is controlled and controlling; it is prescribed,
ordered, assessed and monitored. It is Tylerian (Tyler, 1949). This view
has considerable currency: for example, look at the National Curriculum
of England and Wales. For Tylers aims and objectives read attainment
targets; for Tylers content read programmes of study; for Tylers
evaluation read assessment. Prescription of the linear view of learning
and positivism adopts a linear conception of causality takes place
through the four Key Stages of the National Curriculum. Similarly, the
existing target-oriented curriculum in Hong Kong (Education Department,
1994, pp. 14-15), which is influenced by this National Curriculum,
mentions Targets (Tylers aims and objectives), Content of Learning
(content), Curriculum Strategies (pedagogy) and Assessments
(evaluation).
In such lock-step curricula, progress through the curriculum by both
teachers and students is clear and, being objective-driven, enables policymakers to have clear indications of whether, and how much, the
achievements have met prescribed criteria and targets. Who can wonder
that such a degree of curriculum prescription is being taken up by
governments so enthusiastically across the world?
The trappings of such a mentality are clear everywhere, and
represent a dualism of perception. On the one hand one has a system of
quality assurance, management and control that is transparent to all.

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COMPLEXITY THEORY AND CURRICULUM REFORMS IN HONG KING

Being bureaucratic, it has the potential to raise a long trailing edge of

under-achievement (Lieberman, 1990), and is evidence-based and
teacher-proof, even pupil-proof. On the other hand such measures may
suppress excellence in teaching, learning, and creativity (compare
Lieberman, 1990). For many, they are a manifestation of the excesses of
instrumental reason, scientistic control and technicism being driven into
education, rendering it little more than a service industry for the labour
market.
The Hong Kong CDC (2001, p. 19) comments that we have to move
... to the concept of curriculum as learning experiences to enhance the
effectiveness of learning, and it proscribes earlier curricular
developments (CDC, 2000, p. 9) as being implemented in a linear
manner. To a modernizing mentality, enjoyment, existential possession
of learning, the humanizing and civilizing effects of education, and the
perception of education as an end in itself risk becoming an irrelevance.
Everywhere these appear to have been overshadowed by the thirst for
measurement, a thirst which is barely slaked by the production of so
many pieces of paper that governments are unable to stem the tide of
teacher wastage or cope with desperate problems of teacher recruitment
and retention (compare Smithers & Robinson, 2001). As the industrialist
Senge (1990) remarked, yesterdays solutions are todays problems, and
the harder people push, the harder the system pushes back.
The emphasis is on security and certainty: secure systems, secure
schools, and secure teachers and children. The attraction for many of
security through certainty and control is that it means protection in an
uncertain world, where change, fluidity, loss of identity and meaning,
unpredictability, alienation and anomie reign. The response to change
and uncertainty in society has been through a reassertion of control and
the realignment of education with economic needs. Marketization,
commodification and control, as manifestations of Habermass (1984)
view of instrumental rationality, are colonizing the lifeworld of education.
Yet society is changing. To react to change and uncertainty by
reasserting a modernistic mentality, it could be argued, is fundamentally
misplaced, as it uses an outdated model to meet contemporary needs.
Meeting the challenges of contemporary society by a reversion to, or
prolongation of, a modernist mentality, is questionable. Repackaging
modernism to meet a different society from that which gave rise to
modernism and which modernism served well is to try to apply
yesterdays solutions to todays problems. As Einstein said, our thinking
creates problems which the same level of thinking cant solve. We cannot
solve a problem by examining it from the same frame of reference or
consciousness that created it (Sherman & Schultz, 1998, p. 9; Lissack,
2000, p. 10). We need to look at the situation in a new light. Such a change
of thinking is evident in recent curriculum reform documents in Hong
Kong.

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A Complex Society

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It is a truism to state that society is changing, and that the paradigms for
understanding society are themselves changing. Change is ubiquitous,
and stability and certainty are things of the past. The compression of
time and space into a celebration of the ahistorical present has brought
with it a range of features which, it is argued here, are best characterized
by a complexity-driven paradigm of society, replacing positivism with
complexity theory (Lewin, 1993; Morrison, 2002). The elements of
complexity theory are set out in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Components of complexity theory.

Complexity theory is a theory of adaptation and development in the

interests of survival in a changing environment (Morrison, 2002). New
internal systems emerge through the interaction of internal and external
environments; the theory is one of emergence through self-organization,
feedback and learning.
Complexity theory looks at the world in ways which break with
simple cause-and-effect models, linear predictability, and a dissection
approach to understanding phenomena, replacing them with organic,
non-linear and holistic approaches (Santonus, 1998, p. 3) in which

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relations within interconnected networks are the order of the day

(Youngblood, 1997, p. 27; Wheatley, 1999, p. 10).
Through feedback, recursion, perturbance, auto-catalysis,
connectedness and self-organization, higher and greater levels of
complexity and new differentiated forms of life, behaviour, systems and
organizations arise from lower levels of complexity and existing forms.
These complex forms derive from often comparatively simple sets of
rules; local rules and behaviours generate emergent complex global order
and diversity (Waldrop, 1992, pp. 16-17; Lewin, 1993, p. 38; m, 1994)
through, for example, simple building blocks of the curriculum. General
laws of emergent order can govern adaptive, dynamical processes
(Waldrop, 1992, p. 86; Kauffman, 1995, p. 27).

Figure 2. The rise of emergence in complexity theory.

Figure 2 shows how the interaction of individuals feeds into the wider
environment which, in turn, exerts influence back into the individual
units of the network. Bar-Yam (1997) suggests that a complex system is
formed from its several elements, and that the behaviour of the complex
system as a whole is greater than the sum of the parts (see also Goodwin,
2000, p. 42).
Fixity in the environment and its components does not exist;
stability is the stability of the mortuary. Stable systems, as Stacey (1992,
p. 40) reminds us, ultimately fail. Indeed, April (1997, p. 26) suggests that
change and unpredictability are requirements if an organism is to survive:
a butterfly which flies in a straight line without zigzags will fall prey very
fast. A heartbeat is marked by regularity immediately prior to cardiac
arrest. Curricula must change to survive. Disequilibrium is vital for
survival. The caterpillar must cede to the butterfly if the species is to
survive.
Feedback must occur between the interacting elements of the
system (e.g. parts or elements of the curriculum or its subjects).
Complexity theorists (Waldrop, 1992; Cilliers, 1998) have turned to
Hebbs (1949) views on learning here, and, of course, curricula concern

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Keith Morrison

learning. Hebbs view of learning operates on an associationist or

connectedness principle (compare joined-up thinking): if X and Y occur
together then an association between the two is formed in the brain
synapses; if there is recurrence of the association between X and Y then
the strength of that connection is increased into strong cell assemblies;
if recurrence is minimal or non-existent then the association decays and
dies. If, each time I encounter mathematics, I experience pain, then,
naturally, I will tend to associate pain with mathematics, and this will
shape my reactions to it. I may avoid mathematics or take steps to reduce
the pain; that is, I have learned something and it affects my behaviour.
Negative feedback for example learning that one has failed in
repeated testing brings diminishing returns (Marion, 1999, p. 75). It is
regulatory. Positive feedback brings increasing returns and uses
information not merely to regulate but to change, grow and develop
(Wheatley, 1999, p. 78). It amplifies small changes (Stacey, 1992, p. 53;
Youngblood, 1997, p. 54). Senge et al (2000, p. 84) cite the example of a
baby animal whose eating is voracious, and the more it eats, the faster it
grows; its rate of growth accelerates. Once a child has begun to read she
is gripped by reading, she reads more and learns at an exponential rate.
Not only can feedback be positive, it also needs to be rich. If I simply
award a grade to a students work she cannot learn much from it except
that she is a success or a failure, or somewhere in between. If, on the
other hand, I provide rich feedback, she can learn more; if I only point out
two matters in my feedback then the student might only learn those two
matters; if I point out ten matters then the student might learn ten
matters. We have to recall that the root of feedback is food,
nourishment rather than simply information about low-level curriculum
facts. This strongly affects assessment, and assessment reform for
greater diagnosis and feedback is a feature of the Hong Kong proposals.
Connectedness, a key feature of complexity theory, exists
everywhere. In schools, children are linked to families, teachers, peers,
societies and groups; teachers are linked to other teachers, other
providers of education, work placements for children, support agencies
such as psychological and social services, policy-making bodies, funding
bodies, the courts and police services, and so on. The school is not an
island, but is connected externally and internally in several ways. Indeed,
many schools sink under internal communication and connectedness,
through memoranda, meetings, paperwork, assessment data, inspection
data, working parties, policy and curriculum development groups, email,
voice mail and a host of other forms of communication. The price of
communication is high in terms of teacher stress.
In a rainforest ants eat leaves, and birds eat ants and leave
droppings which fertilize the soil for growing trees and leaves (Lewin,
1993, p. 86). As April et al (2000, p. 34) remark, nature possesses many
features that organizations (and curricula) crave: flexibility, diversity,

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adaptability, complexity, and connectedness. Connectedness is required if

a system is to survive; disturb one element in the connections and either
the species or system must adapt or die; the message is ruthless.
Connectedness through communication is vital. This requires a
distributed knowledge system, in which knowledge is not centrally located
in a command and control centre or a limited set of agents (e.g.
government curriculum decision-makers); rather it is dispersed, shared
and circulated throughout the organization and its members.
If learning through feedback is to take place, if connectedness is to
work successfully, and if knowledge is to be collected from a distributed,
dispersed system, then an essential requirement is effective
communication and collaborative learning. Communication and
collaboration in curricula and pedagogy are key variables (compare
Peters, 1989; Cilliers, 1998). Communication is central to complexity
theory and to curricula that draw inspiration from it. Significant, openended and lateral communication must replace vertical or bilateral forms
of communication, in which directives and decisions descend from on
high in an hierarchical curricular bureaucracy (compare Basil Bernsteins
strong classification and framing, 1971). Complexity theory suggests that,
in a networked structure for self-organization, communication must take
multiple forms, must be through multiple channels, and must be open.
Emergence is the partner of self-organization. Systems possess the
ability for self-organization, which is organization not according to an a
priori grand design (a cosmological argument) nor a deliberately chosen
trajectory or set of purposes (a teleological argument). Rather, the selforganization emerges of itself as the result of the interaction between the
organism and its environment (Casti, 1997), and new structures emerge
that could not have been envisioned initially (Merry, 1998).
The movement towards greater degrees of complexity, change and
adaptability for survival in changing environments is a movement
towards self-organized criticality (Bak & Chen, 1991; Bak, 1996), in which
systems evolve through self-organization towards the edge of chaos
(Kauffman, 1995). Take, for example, a pile of sand (Bak, 1996). By
dropping one grain of sand at a time, a pyramid of sand appears. Drop
another grain of sand and a small cascade of sand runs down the
pyramid; continue further and the sand pile builds up again in a slightly
different shape; continue further and the whole pyramid falls down. This
is chaos, and complexity theory resides at the edge of chaos (Figure 3), at
the point just before the pyramid of sand collapses, between mechanistic
predictability and complete unpredictability (Karr, 1995, p. 3; Bak, 1996).
Linear Systems

Complexity

Non-linear Chaos

Figure 3.

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Stacey (2000, pp. 395 and 399) suggests that a system can only evolve,
and evolve spontaneously, where there is diversity and deviance: a
salutary message for command-and-control teachers who exact
compliance from their pupils, and who are a significant problem in many
Hong Kong schools. Similarly Fullan (2001, p. 42) suggests listening
carefully to dissenters and resisters, as they may have important
messages to convey and may be critical to effective change, building in
difference.
The exact movement, reconfiguration and destruction of the sand
pile mentioned above are largely unpredictable. At the point of selforganized criticality the effects of a single event are likely to be very
large, breaking the linearity of Newtonian reasoning wherein small causes
produce small effects. The single straw breaks the camels back, and a
small cause has a massive effect; a single grain of sand destroys the
pyramid. Change implies, then, a move towards self-organized criticality,
and such self-organized criticality evolves without interference from any
outside agent (Bak, 1996, p. 31): it emerges. In the case of the sand pile,
Michaels (1995) and Bak (1996) suggest that it would be nothing if the
grains did not relate to each other and hold each other together: that is,
relationships and mutual support are keys to success, to successful
curriculum development and pedagogy. Recalling Hebbs account of
learning earlier, if association is to be strengthened then this requires
collaboration.
Adaptation to change requires finding ones niche in ones
environment ones best fitness landscape for survival and
development (Kauffman, 1995) in order to take ones place in
competitive environments. The move to finding ones best situation
propels one toward the edge of chaos, the point of self-organized
criticality (Bak, 1996). A significant factor here is that the closer one
moves towards the edge of chaos, the more creative, open-ended,
imaginative, diverse, and rich are the behaviours, ideas and practices of
individuals and organizations, and the greater is the connectivity,
networking and information sharing (content and rate of flow) between
participants (Stacey et al, 2000, p. 146). The message is that if an
individual or organization wishes to become creative and imaginative in
order to survive, then it may have to expect to be pressed towards selforganized criticality. This is not a euphemism for unmitigated stress and
pressure the intensification thesis (Hargreaves, 1994) but rather a
suggestion that teachers and children need support and space to
develop, to change, and to be creative and imaginative. Simply
pressurising is ineffectual.
Linear, mechanistic models of curricula no longer apply, and
networks and dynamical, ever-changing curricula and turbulent
environments are the order of the day. Put simply, complex adaptive
systems (Waldrop, 1992, pp. 294-299) scan and sense the external

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environment and then make internal adjustments and developments in

order to meet the demands of the changing external environment. This is
the law of requisite variety, which states that internal flexibility, change
and capability must be as powerful as those in the external environment.
It is notable that the Hong Kong CDCs (2001) document includes a list of
websites around the world in its scanning of the external environment. In
making internal curricular changes in order to fit the law of requisite
variety required by complexity theory (Morrison, 2002), school-based,
collaborative, curriculum developments are required, and indeed this is
explicitly supported in the EC and CDC documents.
Gone are the simplistic views of linear causality, the ability to
predict, control and manipulate, and the scientistic advancement of
instrumental reason, and in come uncertainty, networks and connection,
self-organization, emergence over time through feedback and the
relationships of the internal and external environments, and survival and
development through adaptation and change. Society and societal
systems are open; closed systems, as Prigogine & Stengers (1985) remind
us, run down and decay into entropy unless they import energy from
outside. Adapt or die.
The starting points for complexity-based conceptions of the
curriculum are entirely different from modernist conceptions, and can be
characterized as shown in Table I.[1]
One has to note here the move from a monolithic, single curriculum
in modernism, to plural curricula in complexity theory.
The Emergence of Complex Curricula
I suggest that difference, diversity, and change are not only present in
curricula inspired by complexity theory, but are best served by regarding
such curricula as complex adaptive systems, non-linear and open.
Change is addressed through curricula and pedagogy which emphasize
emergence, self-organization, feedback, connectedness, relationships,
collaboration, communication, and order without control, rather
distributed control. Indeed, echoing the vocabulary of complexity, the
Hong Kong CDC (2000, p. 12) regards several key elements of the
curriculum as existing in a dynamic balance, e.g. cooperation/
competition; central development/school-based development; assessment for selection/ assessment for learning.
The Hong Kong CDCs view is that there is an increasing awareness
of the complexity of issues, and the ECs view is that adaptability,
creativity and abilities for communication, self-learning and cooperation
are now the pre-requisites for anyone to succeed (EC, 2000, p. 11); that
the wish is for Hong Kong to be a diverse, democratic, civilized, tolerant,
dynamic and cultivated cosmopolitan city (p. 3) and that an important
aim is to construct a diverse school system (p. 5; emphasis added).

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Similarly, the ECs report mentions that the curriculum should include,
amongst other aims, a focus on developing the capability for
independent thinking, critical analysis and problem-solving and teamwork, as well as adaptability, creativity, organizational skills and
communication skills (p. 9). The resonances with key characteristics of
complexity theory are powerful. In this respect, too, the move from the
target-oriented curriculum in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s to a new
framing of the curriculum which is expressed in Learning for Life (EC,
2000) and Learning to Learn (CDC, 2001) represents a significant
departure from Tylerian sympathies.
Modernist curriculum

Complex curricula

The curriculum is:

Curricula are:

Objectives-driven
Standardized blueprint
Summatively assessed
Simple and straightforward
Prescribed/received/
reproductive/passive
Hierarchical
Bureaucratised
Closed systems
Mechanistic/inflexible
Predictable/linear
Determined
Standardized
Totalizing narratives
Absolutist
Controlling
Directives-driven
Fixed

Process-driven
Diverse/dissimilar
Formative
Complex and individualistic
Negotiated/student-driven/
transformative/adaptive
Collegial
Networked/connected
Open systems
Organic/fluid
Emergent/non-linear
Adaptive/evolving/developmental
Flexible/divergent
No meta-narratives
Shared values/relativism
Self-organized/empowering
Recursive through feedback
Developing through collaborative
learning
Premised on relationships/
communication
Based on order without control and
distributed decision-making

Dehumanized
Driven by powerful groups

Table I. Modernist and complex curricula.

If openness, diversity, difference and change are hallmarks of society, the

curriculum in schools becomes difficult to decide. It is a truism to say
that the curriculum is not value-neutral but is value-loaded. The
questions then become Why do some views of what is a worthwhile
curriculum find expression in schools while others do not?, and Whose
curriculum do we teach?. This adds to commonplace questions
concerning what curriculum we teach the more sensitive questions of
whose curriculum we teach and in whose interests we teach it and with
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COMPLEXITY THEORY AND CURRICULUM REFORMS IN HONG KING

what outcomes. The socially reproductive effects of the curriculum have

been well documented (e.g. Bourdieu, 1976), not least through the
cultural capital thesis, the effects of which, informed by the sociology of
educational knowledge, have been to question not only the contents of
the curriculum (whose curriculum?) but the ideological interests at work
in the curriculum: who gains and who loses by school curricula, whose
voices are heard in curricula and whose voices are silenced. Complexity
theory argues against silencing and for hearing, and the EC is explicit in
its advocacy of fairness, social equity and the no loser principle (EC,
2000, p. 40) .
What we have, then, is an ideological reading of the curriculum, and
not simply the putative value-neutral, ideologically innocent reading
reminiscent of the instrumental reason and positivism of modernist
curricula, in which fact and value are held to be separate. Further, the
consequence is not only to render decisions on curriculum content
problematical, but also to make the curriculum the repository of
dangerous knowledge (Giroux, 1989), in the sense of being a rich means
of intervening in social (and economic) reproduction and raising
awkward questions about power and its operation in society and
decision-making. Complex curricula are unsettling; they challenge the
status quo. In this respect the elevation of dangerous knowledge in the
curriculum becomes paramount, as discussed below.
The complex, emergent, self-organizing, relationship-founded,
feedback-enriched curriculum, with its emphasis on openness, starts
from a very different basis from traditionalist, modernist conceptions of
the curriculum. In principle, the complex curriculum celebrates diversity,
openness, heterogeneity and the development of students and teachers
voices. This accords with a variety of current educational principles in
Hong Kong. For example:
Constructivist views of learning: the ECs report (2000, p. 40) indicates
that through the process of learning, they [students] also
continuously construct and create knowledge;
Social inclusion and respect for diversity: the ECs report (2000, pp. 36
and 40) indicates that there should be no loser in schooling and that
learners are at the heart of the education system;
A view of process as being as important as outcome: the ECs report
(2000, p. 15) indicates that emphasis should be placed on experience as
well as outcomes and that the process of learning is critical (p. 40).
Indeed Slattery (1995, p. 56) regards curriculum as a verb rather than a
noun the doing, not simply the outcome which he traces back to
the running of a race, not the race itself or the racetrack (the contents);
Lifelong learning: the CDCs Learning To Learn (2001) underlines this in
what it terms life-wide learning;

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The significance of metacognition and motivation in learning: the CDCs

Learning to Learn includes such items on its values and attitudes for
incorporation into the curriculum (CDC, 2001, Appendix II, p. 1);
Multiple intelligences: this is reflected in the ECs and CDCs framework
of five Learning Experiences, eight Key Learning Areas, nine Generic
Skills and five sets of Values, Attitudes, and Moral Education (see Table
II).[2]
Five learning
experiences

Eight key learning

areas

Nine generic skills

Values, attitudes
and moral
education

Moral and civic

education
Intellectual
development
Social service
Physical and
aesthetic
development
Work-related
experiences

Chinese-language
education
English-language
education
Mathematics
education
Science education
Technology
education
Personal, social and
humanities education
Arts education
Physical education

Collaboration
Communication
Creativity
Critical thinking
Information
technology
Numeracy
Problem-solving
Self-management
Study

Core personal
values
Sustaining
personal values
Core social values
Sustaining social
values
Attitudes
Moral, emotional
and spiritual
education

Table II. The Hong Kong curriculum areas.

The emphasis is on heterogeneity, multiplicity and difference, on studentcentred learning, and on school-based curriculum development as an
important complement to government guidelines. The CDC (2001,
pp. 69-73) advocates school-based curriculum development, with on-site
support (many action research projects are established in Hong Kong), a
feature like the the self-organization of complexity theory. The CDC (2000,
p. 13) states clearly that the curriculum requires school-based
autonomy, to facilitate learning within a government-set direction.
Content alone is insufficient to realize the complex curriculum, and
it is through pedagogy that much change is effected. Pedagogy implies
relationships, and relationships, communication, connectedness and
feedback lie at the heart of much of the curriculum. Pedagogy transforms
people, and, as Aronowitz & Giroux (1986) remark, teachers act as
transformative intellectuals, working on and with content, not simply
delivering predigested and prescribed curricula, to achieve a more
equitable society in which individual dignity and identity are fashioned
and refashioned. This is the role of critical pedagogy, which shortage of
space prevents this article from unpacking (but see Giroux, 1983, 1989,
1992; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1986). In the complex curriculum, with its
emphasis on interconnectedness and integration of learning, it is within
the learner herself or himself that such integration can be wrought
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through pedagogy as well as through the framing and integration of

curriculum subjects. In Hong Kong the EC (2000, pp. 61-62) advocates
moving from compartmentalised subjects to integrated learning, and from
traditional timetabling to an integrated and flexible arrangement of
learning time, a curriculum with weak classification and framing
(Bernstein, 1971). The CDC (2000, p. 40) writes that a lot of experiences
transcend boundaries of knowledge domains, and are integrated within
the students, and that help should be given to teachers and students to
see the interconnectedness of knowledge.
In discussing contemporary curricula, which Slattery (1995, p. 244),
like Doll (1993), links to complexity and chaos theories, there is an
advocacy of the extensive use of autobiographical reflection, cooperative
learning, hermeneutic methods, critical thinking, journals and portfolios;
the replacement of traditional views of learners as passive receptors of
discrete parcels of information (Slattery, 1995, p. 164) with the
development of independent and critical thinkers. In terms of complexity
theory this accords with Stephen Jay Goulds (1989) view that scientists
need history and narrative, not simply experiments, to make sense of vast
areas of scientific inquiry. Such views accord with the Hong Kong ECs
(2000, p. 40) statement that in a knowledge-based society, students
would no longer receive knowledge passively. Through the process of
learning, they also continuously construct and create knowledge. This
echoes the CDCs (2001) staunch advocacy of lifelong learning in its
agenda for reform.
How some of these principles for a complex curriculum translate
into curricula in general, and in Hong Kong in particular, is addressed
below, in terms of aims, contents, pedagogy, and assessment. One can
see these principles echoed in the ECs (2000) and the CDCs (2000; 2001)
proposals for curricular reform.
A Framework for Considering Complex Curricula
It is perhaps invidious to try to press for specific implications of complex
curricula, for that would be to risk violating some of its key principles,
which are openness, negotiation, diversity, and, echoing post-modernism,
the absence of totalizing narratives. Nevertheless one can tease out from
the preceding discussion some key process guidelines. One important
corollary of the principles of openness, self-organization, distributed
control, relationships, and feedback, is the notion of a negotiated rather
than a prescribed curriculum between teachers and students, as well as
between government departments and schools and these twin notions
find copious expression in the EC and CDC documents cited here.
In terms of aims and values, complexity-theoretical principles
suggest the need to interrogate issues of what curriculum?, whose
curriculum?, in whose interests is this curriculum operating?, and with

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what outcomes is the curriculum operating?. That this engages ideology

critique is very clear, and, in this sense, discussions of the curriculum are
potentially unsettling for policy-makers, teachers and students, as they
challenge issues of power and representation in curricula (Giroux, 1983,
1992). They challenge detailed centralist curriculum prescription and
place much of the development of curricula within the hands of schools,
teachers and pupils. Indeed, one of the implications of complexity-based
curricula is to question, or to throw into relief, the role of government in
curriculum decision-making. Does government actually have a role, or,
echoing Popperian views of government, should it adopt a hands-off
approach? Should it perhaps give guidance rather than insistence,
facilitating self-organization rather than prescribing? Indeed there is a
challenge in complexity-based curricula to the very notion of a single
curriculum; rather it suggests multiple, teacher- and studentderived/negotiated curricula. Whether this is realistic is discussed later.
In terms of curriculum content, though, clearly there is a need for
literacy, numeracy and an introduction to existing areas of knowledge
(compare Giroux, 1992). The implications of open, complexity-based
curricula are that these areas should be added to, to include other
curriculum areas which enable students and teachers voices to be
developed. The status of hitherto low-status or even absent areas of the
curriculum should be elevated, including for example the following areas,
which address key principles of ideology critique and voice, two
important corollaries of self-organization and emergence:

Political and citizenship education;

Media education;
Ecological education;
Equal opportunities;
Multicultural education;
Human rights education;
Personal and social education;
Aesthetic education;
Values education;
Critical literacy.

That this is potentially a very challenging curriculum is reflected in the

traditionally low status accorded to many of these areas of the
curriculum (e.g. in England they either do not appear or are accorded
non-statutory, non-examined status). They deal with dangerous
knowledge and dangerous memory (Giroux, 1989; Morrison, 1995), i.e.
knowledge which could unsettle the societal status quo because it
challenges policy-makers whose actions contribute to that status quo.[3]
For example:

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COMPLEXITY THEORY AND CURRICULUM REFORMS IN HONG KING

Political education would interrogate the contents as well as the

legitimacy of global capitalism, of local, national, international and
neighbouring political systems and practices. Equality, democracy, and
the politics of China would be questioned.
Citizenship education would engage issues of rights, responsibilities,
multicultural and multidimensional citizenship, de jure and de facto
citizenship (a difficult and topical matter in issues of rights of abode in
Hong Kong by mainland Chinese).
Media education would engage the use of media to massage or
influence political processes. It should not overlook the fact that Hong
Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, and has yet referred
to China for interpretations of its basic law.
Ecological education would examine not only the destruction of the
planet by global capitalism, but the politics of poverty in, for example,
Third World desertification, rainforest clearance, pollution of the
earths atmosphere, and the actions of governments to improve or
contribute to these situations.
Equal opportunities would engage, for example, equal opportunities and
the acceptability of unequal opportunities to those of, for instance,
different gender, race, ethnicity, age, ability, geography and economy.
Multicultural education would embrace, for example, a consideration of
other faiths and the social fabric which these underpin. Faith is a
highly sensitive issue in China, which affects Hong Kong.
Human rights education would seek to not only understand its central
concepts but also identify human rights violations and the countries
and states which violate human rights in all their forms. China Hong
Kongs parent has a questionable human rights record.
Personal and social education would examine, for example, healthy
living and the politics of health and disease, social and antisocial
behaviour and the politics of excessive competition and aggressive
behaviour. Hong Kong is highly competitive and exhibits extremes of
wealth and poverty.
Aesthetic education would see the furtherance of arts education rather
than its sacrifice in over-full curricula.
Values education would place ethics and morals on the educational
agenda.
Critical literacy would engage issues of voicing and silencing in schools
curricula, i.e. a critical reading of school curricula.
Of course, one could expand on each of these areas, which are by way of
example only. It is important to note that the CDCs document (2000,
pp. 44-45) advises placing several of these areas of potentially dangerous
knowledge into the curriculum, e.g. sex and family education, health
education, environmental education, computer ethics and other value

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issues. Similarly its document of 2001 (p. 85) includes clear advocacy of
moral and civic education and interactive learning.
In terms of pedagogy, several principles flow from a complexitybased conception of curriculum, for example (compare Morrison, 1996):
A process curriculum;
Higher-order thinking; the ECs report emphasizes the need for
independent, creative thinkers (2000, p. 38);
Discussion-based activities and increased pupil talk;
Critical pedagogy (Giroux, 1983);
Ideology critique and the call for collaborative action research in
schools (compare Carr & Kemmis, 1986), a feature which is being
enacted in Hong Kong as several action research projects are being
sponsored by the governments Quality Education Fund
(http://www.info.gov.hk/qef/index1.htm);
Autonomous, experiential learning; this is evident in the ECs advocacy
of a new culture in learning and teaching (2000, pp. 60-62);
Weak classification and framing, and integrated curricula (Bernstein,
1971); the EC report of 2000 (p. 61) and CDC report of 2000 place
emphasis on integration;
Community-related learning; the EC report of 2000 and CDC report of
2000 place emphasis on community learning (pp. 61 and 40
respectively);
Collaborative/cooperative work; this finds voice in the generic skills
of the CDCs 2001 report and the repeated emphasis on cooperative
learning in its 2000 document;
Problem-posing and problem-solving;
Flexible learning, made possible in part through developments in
information communication and technology;
Negotiated learning and student-centred learning.
These are touchstones for pedagogy, and are at a far remove from the
transmissive, didactic, traditionalist, rote-learning and repetition-based
views of learning which characterize some models of the Chinese learner
and teacher. It is interesting to note that the EC report of 2000
emphasises a movement away from transmission to learning how to
learn: the development of metacognition (p. 60).[4]
In terms of assessment, several key principles flow from a complexity
perspective. For example, assessment is to be: formative; authentic;
negotiated; participatory; portfolio-based (the EC report of 2000
specifically mentions this on p. 101); connoisseurship-based (compare
Eisner, 1985); emancipatory and empowering. Indeed the CDC document
(2000, pp. 54-55) is explicit in its advocacy of formative assessment, a
diversity of modes of assessment, target-setting with students, student
self-assessment, diagnostic assessment, and negotiated assessments.

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Further, its document of 2001 (pp. 81-82) specifically advocates

increasing feedback, portfolios, student self-management, and using
assessment for creativity, all central principles of complexity theory.
These, it must be recognized, may sit uncomfortably with formal
examinations and standardized, summative assessments. That is
unsurprising, given that these latter notions emanate from modernism.
Indeed the CDC (2000, p. 12) document draws attention to this dynamic
tension.
What one can see is that complexity theory touches several key
areas of the curriculum, from aims to assessment.

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Concerns about the Complexity-based Curriculum

The complexity-based curriculum is not without its problems, for
example whether modernism might hold out more promise than other
approaches in solving major world problems (compare Habermas, 1987).
Another problem is relativism: are complexity theorists caught in their
own trap of relativism? As ONeill (1995, p. 191) suggests in his withering
critique of postmodernism, which can be applied equally to complexity:
do complexity theorists have to dance the dance of difference, breakdown and discontinuity with nothing to hold on to no tradition, no text,
no subject, no story to remember? Indeed one has to speculate, taking
the lead from Habermas (1987), whether the project of modernity is
exhausted (he suggests that it is not), and, given the problems which
societies face, if complexity theory will be able to deliver solutions, or if
greater faith might be placed in a revitalized, ethically invigorated, and
ideologically and critically energized enterprise of modernity.
Further, one has to be cautious, for in being too prescriptive one
runs the risk of violating the principle of openness and uncertainty in
complexity theory. Complexity theory suggests that the future is
unpredictable, hence any absolutist tendencies in prescribing newer
forms of curricula will suffer from the same teleological or cosmological
determinism for which command-and-control curriculum decision-making
can be criticized. The implications of complexity theory are
unpredictable because it espouses uncertainty; pushed to its limits it is
an open question whether complexity theory, in part because of its
implied relativism, predicts or begets its own demise. The Hong Kong
curriculum design risks being cosmologically determinist the grand
design in its prescribed overall framework.
Complexity theory is amoral, yet education is a moral activity.
Complexity theory alone cannot provide a sufficient account of curricula
and curriculum development, for these require moral choices to be made.
Hence there are limits to be placed on the potential of complexity theory
to guide curricula, which are deliberative and moral.

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Moreover, it can be argued that several of the ideas in the reform

agenda of Hong Kong and indeed of curriculum development can
stand by themselves without requiring complexity theory. Many of the
suggestions here have flourished on their own terms without needing
specific reference to complexity theory. Is complexity theory redundant,
then, just another unnecessary consideration in an already overburdened
educational world? Does one need to learn a theory in order to be an
effective practitioner (after all, many governments are driven by
pragmatics, rather than principles)? Of course not, but it helps.
These are important concerns. However, there is an equally positive
set of messages from complexity and its applicability in the Hong Kong
situation, and it is these that have been explored in this article.
There remain practical concerns about complexity-based curricula
which need to be recognized, for example:
Practicality (e.g. class size, the need for examinations and measures in
competitive environments; time; the need for minimum competencies);
Superficiality (relativism and the risk of lack of in-depth study, which
may require prescription and pressure as a counter);
Uncertainty (curricula are unpredictable, with the risk of lowering
quality in the pursuit of difference and quantity of experiences);
Sensitivity, threat and risk (dangerous knowledge constitutes a threat to
conventional curricula, pedagogy and assessment; there is a risk of
unclear returns on investment in new curricula);
Changing mentalities (how to manage the process of change without
overload, and persuading teachers, students, parents and principals of
the benefits);
Teacher expertise (their capability to be polymaths, their abilities and
preparedness to change, innovation fatigue and overload. The CDC
(2001, pp. 12-14) has recognised this latter point in its six-year plan,
itself divided into short-, medium-, and long-term development
strategies);
Resources (how to resource many curricula, e.g. information and
communication technology; time; teachers);
Assessment (how to incorporate necessary external assessments within
the very different proposals for assessment in complexity theory).
The task, as Fullan (2001) indicates, is not only about the content of
change, but its management; the problem is changing, not only change;
the gerund, not only the noun. Hong Kong is suffering from innovation
fatigue, with a plethora of innovations in the last decade. Whether these
latest reforms will be successful whether they will be activated from
inert documents is an empirical matter. Encouragingly, perhaps, these
issues are addressed in the documents from the EC and the CDC.

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Two issues can be raised about the complex curriculum, in addition

to the practical matters raised above:

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Does the complex curriculum risk surrendering the concepts of better

and worse curricula, learning, and outcomes simply to difference,
incommensurability and, if the argument is extrapolated, to
relativism? This is logically self-defeating as well as being ethically
questionable. The totalism of relativism, pushed to its limits, is its own
undoing.
Children may be in no position to judge what is in their own best
interests, and the prudent parent and the in loco parentis principles,
coupled with the authority of expertise and the learned wisdom of
expertise, should not be lost.
Hence, to the question will the complex curriculum provide a complete
alternative to modernist curricula?, perhaps the answer is partially, but
not completely.
When one examines the ECs and the CDCs proposals for
curriculum reform in Hong Kong, it is clear that several of its views
resonate clearly with tenets of complexity theory. It is also equally clear
that the proposals are more touched by practicality than some of the
prescriptions for complexity-based curricula set out here. This is an
important issue, for one should be cautious about buying into complex
curricula to the exclusion of other forms of curriculum; that is the error
of bivalent thinking, and indeed, is arguably against the anti-totalizing
spirit of postmodernism, itself perhaps a bedfellow of complexity.
Complexity is not without its problems, as outlined above, and this
suggests that caution has to be exercised in being foundationalist, in
seeking to base all curricula on complexity; indeed complexity theory
argues against foundationalism. Rather, perhaps it is wiser to temper
complexity with eclecticism, just as it is perhaps wise not to throw the
baby of effectively managed curricula out with the bathwater of Tylerism;
they need not be mutually exclusive. In this respect it is unsurprising,
perhaps, that the reforms to the Hong Kong curriculum are taking the
best of both, indeed all, worlds. Further, one can observe that this article
has deliberately used a quasi-Tylerian frame of aims, content, pedagogy
and assessment in order to discuss the complex curriculum here.
Conclusion
This article has examined three seminal curriculum reform documents in
Hong Kong, and has suggested that they embody a paradigm shift (EC,
2000, p. 40) in curriculum thinking. Whether they are translated into
practice in an equally reformist manner is an open question. The
challenge of complexity theory is a challenge to consider the values and

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Keith Morrison

purposes of education as an end in itself, and its role in bringing about a

more just, equitable and democratic society, not simply to service jobs.
One can see this voiced in the recommendations for educational reform
by the EC and the CDC in Hong Kong.
This article has also suggested that, regardless of the desirability of
complexity-based curricula, there are very real problems with complexity
theory, and these cannot be overlooked. Of course, one does not need
awareness of complexity theory to be able to discuss many of the
educational issues here: higher-order thinking, negotiated learning,
student voice, open curricula, and so on. Indeed the central notion of
ideology critique stems not from complexity theory, but from archmodernists of the Frankfurt school, in particular Horkheimer, Marcuse
and, later, Habermas. Further, simply observing some complexity
theorys manifestations is no basis for its advocacy; to derive an ought
from an is is to commit a category mistake.
The promises and challenges of complexity theory are immense.
Complexity resides at the edge of chaos, where fecundity, creativity,
imaginativeness, innovation and diversity are at their greatest, without
tipping over into chaos. That quality, surely, is its most powerful
advocate.
The reassertion of humanity into a previously technicist curriculum
is of major importance, and complexity theory holds out the possibility
for this, while for much of modernism it is an irrelevance or an
encumbrance. As Jacob Bronowski remarked in another context:
We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and
power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order
and the human act. We have to touch people. (Bronowski, 1974,
p. 374)

Notes
[1] Even though one can replace the role of education as another service
industry with all the panoply of the Tylerian mentality and its link to
accountability, one ought not to overlook the fact that Tyler was asked,
qua manager, to devise a curriculum that met managerialist concerns of
the time, which was largely characterized by scientific management and
Taylorism. Tylerism, it must be said, is useful for managers and
management, but, like much management, is positivist and even
manipulative (compare Everard & Morris, 1991) .
[2] Of course, this is not new; for example the Core Curriculum for Australian
Schools (Curriculum Development Centre, 1980, p. 20) discusses learning
processes (ways of organizing knowledge; dispositions and values;
interpersonal and group relationships; learning and thinking techniques;
skills or abilities; forms of expression; practical performances); areas of
knowledge and experience (arts and crafts; environmental studies;

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mathematics; social, cultural and civic studies; health education; science

and technology, communication; moral reasoning and values; work,
leisure and lifestyles); and core learnings (selected and organized by
schools).

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[3] It is little wonder that these areas of the curriculum had little statutory
status in the National Curriculum of England and Wales, and were
unexamined, both key ways of according status to a subject.
[4] Of course one has to be cautious in being too dismissive of rote learning,
memorization, putative low-level cognitive strategies, large classes and
putative teacher-centred teaching in considering the Chinese, or indeed
other learners. Research by Biggs (1996a; 1996b), Marton et al (1996),
Dahlin & Watkins (2000), Biggs & Watkins (2001), Watkins & Biggs (2001),
Cortazzi & Jin (2001) and Mok et al (2001) suggests that it may be a
Western misperception to regard such practices negatively, as problems.
Asian students achieve highly on international measures of performance.
Repetition and memorization do not preclude, and indeed can lead to,
understanding, deep rather than superficial learning, high-level cognitive
strategies and the creation of a deep impression of material on the
Chinese learners mind. Many Chinese teachers handle large classes in
cognitively sophisticated, high-level, involved and engaging ways (i.e. the
separation of teacher-centred teaching from learner-centred learning is
untenable; Cortazzi & Jin, 2001). However, one has to note that these
studies report on understanding, and suggest that understanding may not
be a casualty of traditionalist teaching. That may not be in question; more
to the point is whether these approaches are sufficiently transformative,
sufficiently empowering, and sufficient in promoting student voice,
creativity, self-organization, critique and societal emancipation. As Marx
said in his Theses on Feuerbach: The philosophers have only interpreted
the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Correspondence
Keith Morrison, School of Education, Inter-University Institute of Macau,
Rua de Londres P, Edf. Tak Ip Plaza, R/C 3 andar, Macau, via Hong
Kong (kmorrison@iium.edu.mo).
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