What is complex learning

What is complex learning?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Complex learning happens when people solve real problems instead of just memorizing facts. Think about the difference between reading about how to ride a bicycle and actually learning to ride one. You cannot learn to ride a bicycle just by reading about it – you need to practice, fall, adjust, and try again until your body understands how to balance. Health challenges work the same way. Reading about how to respond to a disease outbreak is very different from actually managing one. Complex learning recognizes this difference. 5 key features of complex learning: Why it matters for health work: Most health challenges are complex problems. Disease outbreaks, vaccination campaigns, and health system improvements all require more than just technical knowledge. They require the ability to: Complex learning builds these abilities by engaging people with real challenges, supporting them as they try solutions, and helping them reflect on what they learn. …

Complex problems

What is a complex problem?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

What is a complex problem and what do we need to tackle it? Problems can be simple or complex. Simple problems have a clear first step, a known answer, and steps you can follow to get the answer. Complex problems do not have a single right answer. They have many possible answers or no answer at all. What makes complex problems really hard is that they can change over time. They have lots of different pieces that connect in unexpected ways. When you try to solve them, one piece changes another piece, which changes another piece. It is hard to see all the effects of your actions. When you do something to help, later on the problem might get worse anyway. You have to keep adapting your ideas. To solve really hard problems, you need to be able to: The most important things are being flexible, watching how every change …

Towards a complex systems meta-theory of learning as an emergent phenomenon

Education as a system of systems: rethinking learning theory to tackle complex threats to our societies

Reda SadkiTheory

In their 2014 article, Jacobson, Kapur, and Reimann propose shifting the paradigm of learning theory towards the conceptual framework of complexity science. They argue that the longstanding dichotomy between cognitive and situative theories of learning fails to capture the intricate dynamics at play. Learning arises across a “bio-psycho-social” system involving interactive feedback loops linking neuronal processes, individual cognition, social context, and cultural milieu. As such, what emerges cannot be reduced to any individual component. To better understand how macro-scale phenomena like learning manifest from micro-scale interactions, the authors invoke the notion of “emergence” prominent in the study of complex adaptive systems. Discrete agents interacting according to simple rules can self-organize into sophisticated structures through across-scale feedback. For instance, the formation of a traffic jam results from the cumulative behavior of individual drivers. The jam then constrains their ensuing decisions. Similarly, in learning contexts, the construction of shared knowledge, norms, values …

Learning for knowledge creation WHO Scholar programme

Learning for Knowledge Creation: The WHO Scholar Program

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy, Scholar Approach

Excerpted from: Victoria J. Marsick, Rachel Fichter, Karen E. Watkins, 2022. From Work-based Learning to Learning-based Work: Exploring the Changing Relationship between Learning and Work, in: The SAGE Handbook of Learning and Work. SAGE Publications. Reda Sadki of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), working with Jhilmil Bahl from the World Health Organization (WHO) and funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, developed an extraordinary approach to blending work and learning. The program started as a series of digitally offered courses for immunization personnel working in various countries, connecting in-country central planners, frontline workers, and global actors. The program was designed to address five common problems in training (Sadki, 2018): the inability to scale up to reach large audiences; the difficulty in transferring what is learned; the inability to accommodate different learners’ starting places; the need to teach learners to solve complex problems; and the inability to develop sufficient expertise …