Supercomplexity and Education Research

Abstract

Supercomplexity is that state of affairs that is characterized by multiple, conflicting, and proliferating accounts of a situation, in which there are no secure categories through which to anchor oneself in the world. Stated thus, understanding supercomplexity is at a fork: it can lead either to relativism or can be coupled to a realism. I opt here for the latter gambit, specifically marrying supercomplexity to (Roy Bhaskar's) critical realism and I do so by placing my reflections in the context of investigations of the university. Grasped as a site of supercomplexity, the university is open not just to multiple interpretations and ideas (ideas of the university now flourishing and conflicting) but to infinite possibilities. This is where the researcher-as-scholar comes into her or his own in discerning and imagining possibilities for the university in the 21st century.