Table 1
Key features of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
| Independence: | CAS consist of individual agents [11] who make independent choices about their actions [8]. |
| Adaptability: | Each agent adapts to changes in the context, past experience and to each other’s behaviour [67812]. |
| Unpredictability: | The independence and adaptability of the agents leads to non-linearity and unpredictability [56912]. |
| Emergence: | Interactions between agents create outcomes that are greater than the sum of the individual agent behaviours [6]. The system’s behaviour relies less on the nature of the individual agents than on the quantity and quality of connections between them [8]. |
| Patterns: | Despite the unpredictability, principles and patterns arise [12]. These patterns provide understanding to how the system works [9] as they guide behaviours within it [12]. |
| Distributed control: | Control is dispersed as a result of a huge number of decisions made by individual agents [13] making the system resistent to centralised control [614]. |
| Self-organisation: | Order, innovation and progress naturally arise from within the system [515]. Work arounds and muddling through are central to CAS [58]. Tensions and paradoxes do not necessarily need to be resolved [11]. |
| Embeddedness: | Agents and CASs are embedded within other CASs [6]. Therefore, agents or systems cannot be understood without reference to the other systems [1114]. |
| Fuzzy, ill-defined boundaries: | The system boundaries are permeable and hard to define [6]. |
Table 2
The forces preventing fairness emerging from the complex adaptive system.
| “COMPLEX”: FORCES IMPAIRING INTERACTIVITY |
|---|
Assessor and student forces
|
Tool forces
|
System forces
|
| “ADAPTIVE”: FORCES IMPAIRING ADAPTABILITY |
Assessor and student forces
|
Tool forces
|
System forces
|
| “SYSTEM”: FORCES IMPAIRING EMBEDDEDNESS |
Assessor and student forces
|
Tool forces
|
System forces
|