The challenges of teaching complexity sciences to novice learners in public administration

Gilbride, Neil ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7612-1402 (2025) The challenges of teaching complexity sciences to novice learners in public administration. Teaching Public Administration, 43 (2). pp. 1-14. ISSN 0144-7394

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Abstract

There is a rich history of examining the functions and activities of public administration through the lens of complexity theory. Arguments for training and educating public administrators in this discipline are both longstanding and highly relevant in the modern-day context. This paper seeks to add to the existing literature which explores educational methods for teaching complexity sciences to public administrators through a novel analysis that integrates two different psychological domains - applied cognitive psychology and adult developmental psychology. Introducing the notion of thought architecture, this analysis will first acknowledge that public administrators are likely novices in complexity, due to their limited exposure to necessary declarative and conceptual knowledge and their stage of adult development. Second, this analysis will show that features of a complex system exist in tension with instructional methods typically associated with helping novices acquire knowledge or advance in their stage of adult development. In light of this finding, appropriate and useful instructional strategies drawn from these two psychological domains that help to reconcile this tension will be discussed.

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