Resources for Complexity in Language Education

1. What complexity is (and isn’t)

• Complex Dynamic Systems Theory in Language Education (2024). Useful when you want an overview of CDST as used in language teaching and learning: its history, its core ideas, and three major strands of complexity-inspired scholarship.
• Complex Dynamic Systems Theory as a meta-theory for language education (2024). Useful when you want to think about how CDST can inform TESOL and language education as a whole, rather than as one theory among many.
• Complexity theory in language education: What is it? (2018). Useful when you want a short account of what complex systems are, and why they are useful when thinking about language education.
• Complexity in ELT: What it is and what it isn’t (2015). Useful when you need a working definition of Complex Systems Theory as used in applied linguistics and language education.
• How many components must a complex system have? (2014). Useful when you assume that a complex system must have many components, and want to see why it need not.

2. Complexity as a way of thinking about the field

• Manchester Roundtable on Complexity Theory and ELT (2015). Useful when you want to see where a conversation about complexity and teaching practice began: a one-day event in Manchester, with contributions from Lynne Cameron, Susan Dawson, Sarah Mercer, Juup Stelma and me, which asked how complexity theory might inform ELT practice, and not just research.
• Complex Systems Theory as a Shared Discourse Space for TESOL (2018). Useful when you want to read about the TESOL Journal article that grew out of the Roundtable, and the background to it.
• Thinking of TESOL as an ecology of ideas (2021). Useful when you want to explore what it means, in theory and in practice, that everything in language education is connected to everything else.
• The Languages Education Iceberg (2025). Useful when you want to see how complexity theory can help explain why languages education thrives in some schools and struggles in others.

3. A language school as a complex system

• A Language School as a Complex System (2018). Useful when you want a brief summary of what the book is about, and what it aims to do.
• A Language School as a Complex System: Why did I write this book? (2018). Useful when you want to know the purpose of the book, the contribution it hopes to make, and the more personal reason behind it.
• Describing a school as a complex system (2018). Useful when you are considering a complexity perspective for studying a school or other institution, and want to weigh its advantages.
• Complexity & ELT (research page). Useful when you want background on the doctoral case study of a language school in Greece that led to the book.

The monograph A Language School as a Complex System is based on my doctoral research, published by Peter Lang in 2018. It follows a language school in Greece through a period of transition, as it attempted to reform its curriculum, and it asks why this effort did not work out exactly as planned.

The main thesis of the book is that we can think of the school as a complex dynamic system, and that doing so helps us make sense of phenomena in language education that are neither completely predictable nor entirely random.

The book also argues that any description of a complex system needs four parts: the forms of teaching and learning conceivably available (its state space); the forms made more likely by the resources available (its affordances); the main motivational drivers at work (its intentionalities); and the forms of teaching and learning that actually take place (its attractors).

4. Intentionality and intentional dynamics

Intentionality describes the ‘aboutness’ of the mind: when we think, believe or fear, we always think, believe or fear something. This is important when we think about complex dynamic systems, because these are creations of the mind directed at something. For instance, a system of language learning might bring together teachers, learners, books and curricula, and classrooms and projectors; many of the same entities might be assembled in a system that we construe to understand, say, linguistic imperialism. The two systems have the same constituents, but different intentionalities. This is an idea Juup Stelma and I explore in The Intentional Dynamics of TESOL. The most recent post below is the best place to start; the others trace how this line of thinking developed.

• Intentionality, Language Education and Complex Dynamic Systems (2026). Useful when you want a step-by-step introduction to intentionality, from Brentano to the four-level model, and an argument that complex systems are themselves intentional constructs.
• Tracing dynamics of intentions in Greek ELT (2014). Useful when you want to see where the idea began: a conference paper that eventually grew into a theory of intentionality as a core aspect of CDST in language education.
• Intentional Dynamics in TESOL: An Ecological Perspective (2015). Useful when you want to see how intentionality can define language education systems, and offer a common frame for describing everything from individual learners to nation-wide systems.
• Intentionality & Complex Systems Theory in Language Education (2015). Useful when you want to read about a chapter, co-authored with Juup Stelma, that first brought the two ideas together.
• The Intentional Dynamics of TESOL (2021). Useful when you want a short introduction to the monograph before deciding whether to read it.

5. Reading the wider field

• Complexity Theory & Language Development: A review of Ortega & Han (2017) (2019). Useful when you are deciding whether to read Complexity Theory and Language Development, and want a reviewer’s view first.
• How can complexity inform ELT? (Video by Diane Larsen-Freeman) (2015). Useful when you want to hear Diane Larsen-Freeman discuss what complexity can offer English language teaching.
• Complexity studies in Applied Linguistics (2012). Useful when you want a pointer to an early special issue on complex systems theory in applied linguistics and language education.