A complex dynamic systems perspective on the roles of culture, context, and identity in psychoeducational interventions

Abstract

In this paper, we apply a Complex Dynamic Systems (CDS) perspective to reconsider current causal assumptions about educational contexts and the roles of culture, context, and identity in psychoeducational interventions. Focusing on phenomena such as teachers' and students' engagement, motivation, development, and wellbeing, we emphasize the phenomenon's conceptual unit-of-analysis for interventions as “the agent(s) in their authentic lived environment.” Different from assumptions about causality in prevalent approaches to designing and evaluating interventions (e.g., RCT) as cross-contextual, independent, and mostly linear, a CDS perspective affords accounting for contextual and treatment-related heterogeneity and dynamism by viewing causal processes as emergent, non-deterministic, and changing due to factors' inter-dependence, shifting stability, and contextual embeddedness. We describe a CDS model of culturally and contextually based identity, motivation, and action—the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI)—to illustrate the application of CDS to psychoeducational interventions. We exemplify this perspective's implications for designing and evaluating psychoeducational interventions as design-based case studies that ground analyses at the unit-of-analysis of the “agent(s)-in-context.”