Why Educators Need to Know about Chaos Theory

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

My first year of teaching, I taught a student named Marvin (not his real name). He was young for a third grader, but a bouncy, sweet young man who read on a pre-primer level. Throughout the course of the year, he made great progress. Our school qualified for free tutors, and his tutor came every week and developed a wonderful relationship with Marvin and his family. His mother and father were incredibly supportive and read with Marvin every night, and we saw Marvin move up two grade levels in reading over the course of the year.

Of course, he was still very young and behind, so we (his family, myself, and the school) made the decision to retain Marvin. Surely one more year would catch him up fully and he would enter fourth grade ready to conquer the world.

That was the plan. Then, Marvin's dad went to jail. His mom had a baby and had to go back to work, meaning she wasn't home most nights to read with him and he went to a babysitter who watched several other children. His tutor moved on to other work and was never replaced. Marvin's progress stalled. Then, on the day of the reading standardized assessment, our school security officer yelled at Marvin to pull up his pants right before Marvin came into my classroom, so Marvin came in, put his head on his desk, and despite all my efforts to coax him into a better mood, simply filled in random bubbles on his answer sheet.

Meanwhile, I came across the research on retention and the potential impacts it has on student dropout levels. I still feel the guilt of that decision to this day. I know that I thought I was making the best decision at the time, and all signs pointed to it being a good decision.

I'd forgotten about Chaos Theory, though.

You've probably heard of Chaos Theory. It's often known as the "Butterfly Effect," where a butterfly in some part of the world flaps its wings and causes a ripple of changes that affect the weather halfway across the world. The mathematics behind this theory originated with Henri Poincaré in the 1800s, when he noted that small initial measurements that may not even be registered by astronomers can lead to enormous impacts that are then observable. These observable impacts happen seemingly at random, but they aren't random; we just can't always perceive their causes. He therefore argued that this made strong predictions nearly impossible.

In the 1900s, Edward Lorenz entered the field and coined the term "Chaos Theory" to explain why a butterfly in Brazil can potentially cause a tornado in Texas.


The business world studies Chaos Theory in order to understand that long-term predictions are difficult, and one of the only things we can predict with certainty is an unknown amount of unpredictability. This translates to a need to develop long-range goals yet create avenues for flexibility within the action steps to meet those plans.

What does this have to do with education?

A lot, when you think about it.

Despite the slow swing of the pendulum away from high-stakes test scores, we're still living that world where a handful of standardized test scores can make or break an entire school. Therefore, schools make very calculated predictions about who will definitely or can maybe pass and implement very strategic instructional interventions for that latter group.

Here's the thing, though: students are not test scores. While we might wish that if we simply apply intervention A, we will get outcome B, people are actually a bundle of often unpredictable variables. We cannot only look at students from an instructional perspective; for instance, what Marvin needed most that second year with me wasn't more instruction. He needed stability. He needed trusted adults to help him work through his feelings. He needed someone to realize that on standardized assessment day, maybe his pants could sag just a little or could be addressed without yelling.

That's what Chaos Theory tells us: academic excellence doesn't come simply from quality instruction. There are simply too many variables, many of which we cannot measure and may never even realize exist, that have nothing to do with instruction. We have to welcome, teach, and support the whole child. We have to build schools that are flexible to meet students' changing needs, sometimes from one day to the next. We have to have a common vision and language of excellence, but teachers also need to have the discretion and training to meet students' needs, whether academic or otherwise.

In short, it's not enough to even expect the unexpected in education: we have to embrace it.













Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Director of Innovation and Professional Learning at Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.