Agile Actors on Complex Educational Terrains

In this paper I will develop some of the insights for higher education that arise from my 2011 book Complexity Institutions and Public Policy. There I analysed the stability of social mobility patterns across west European countries in terms of Bak’s notion of ‘self-organised criticality’. Using complexity perspectives I also modelled the dynamics of social class segregation that can develop in secondary schools when these are set in a strongly competitive framework of parental choice. I argued however that scholars who apply complexity perspectives to social dynamics must do so with full regard to the institutional processes involved and the political economy of the society in question. My paper will seek to apply such an approach in the field of high education. It will in part draw on my forthcoming book Agile Actors on Complex Terrains, to be published by Routledge in mid-2016.