•1. The constraints of class members

•2. The environment, inclusive of the equipment

•3. The task(s) Be ready to share your reflections with your colleagues.

•2. Bottom-up emergent

•3. Short-range relationships

•4. Nested structure

•5. Ambiguously bounded

•6. Organizationally closed

•7.Structure determined

•8. Far from equilibrium
Examples of how these have been used to plan PE lessons. They can also provide thinking space for critical decisions to be considered.


•1. Self organising properties spontaneously rise e.g. in response to a problem solving movement challenge, or a strategies offensive team play. 

•2. Emerging properties which exceed the summed total of individual agents e.g. a group approach to creating a MTP rather than 20 individual efforts could illuminate other features not dependent upon the governing policy (school planning or national policy enactment; Ofsted’ 3 Is).

•3. Info exchange is between close neighbours e.g. pupil to pupils, to the teacher, the TA rather than top-down or centralised control. 

•4. Complex systems (such as a school, a PE department or set of colleagues planning and teaching PE) often comprise other complex properties-proffering opportunity to new patterns, activities and new rules of behaviour.

•5. Complex forms will continuously exchange- information, practice, insights through reflective practice for example, with their surroundings- they are ambiguous as they are open and nuanced. A developing skill theme- a pupil will progress using the environment and affordances to good advantage in response to opportunities with the proficiencies  developed, the feedback provided, the peer input and the next pass if in game play. 

•6. Organisations are inherently stable through behavioural patterns or internal organizations. Pupils know to respond in different settings through the content across the day. Teachers will always start with register and elicitation etc. PE  planning and teaching and evaluation will always follow that sequence. 

•7. Being structure determined means that an entity /system, can change its own structure as to adapt within the dynamic contexts. E.g. a pupil’s progression through a movement sequence experienced/taught in the gym would change when moving to the outdoors into an obstacle course set up.

• 8. Complex systems are far from equilibrium as they do not operate in balance- e.g. neither does our pedagogical blend through content; PK with CK to create PCK.