Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 46 seconds

Hi Maha,

Instead of trying to respond to yours, I’ve got a few of my own that might help you refine yours. Here are a few ways I think about these:

Education example:

Simple- Taking attendance. It is a procedure that is scripted and can be done the same way every day. If a school suddenly stops taking attendance they will slip over the cliff into chaos. No funding, angry parents, ditching teens.

Complicated- Curriculum selection or assessment design. Experts disagree but you need experts to decide. Research base is important.

Complex- Intervention design for learners who are underserved. Safe fail experiments are important and you may have to try a few things to reach different learners because of the inherent complexity of learning, learners, etc…

Chaos- 7th grade boys find out there will be a fire drill in advance. Instead of walking out the school during the drill, they lay on the ground choking because of non-existent smoke. Some of them run around pretending to look for kids who are trapped and cannot escape the imaginary fire. This confuses all students and staff for about 10 minutes.

Reading specific example:

Simple- Do you have texts? Do you have a teacher? Did you plan for this in the student’s schedule? If no, you’ve got chaos.

Complicated- What reading curriculum should we use in 7th grade? 7th grade reading scores are famously wild to study. Experts will disagree but research and experts must be consulted.

Complex- Intervention design for learners who are underserved. Safe fail experiments are important and you may have to try a few things to reach different learners because of the inherent complexity of learning, learners, etc…

Chaos- Teacher insists students can’t learn or read, there are no text resources, students hate the teacher and claim to hate reading.

Systems example:

Simple- gumball machine. If it is broken you jiggle the handle or wedge a fork in to the hole that dispenses the gumballs.

Complicated- a Ferrari. Two different mechanics will sell you different things or recommend different approaches to maintenance but in the end the Ferrari is engineered one way. You can codify the construction of a Ferrari.

Complex- botany experiments in the rainforest. You conduct them one year and get one set of results but when you try to replicate them you get different results the next year. Species go extinct all the time and the biome is constantly in flux.

Chaos- A natural disaster where everyone looks to the city or military for instructions about evacuation. Leaders have to take command and give orders even when outcomes are unclear.