Mind, Brain, and Education

In the context of an educational or clinical intervention, we often ask questions such as “How does this intervention influence the task behavior of autistic children?” or “How does working memory influence inhibition of immediate responses?” What do we mean by the word influence here? In this article, we introduce the framework of complex dynamic systems (CDS) to disentangle the meaning of words such as influence, and to discuss the issue of education and intervention as something that takes place in the form of complex, real‐time, situated processes. What are the applied implications of such a CDS framework? Can we use it to improve education? Five general principles—process laws—are introduced, which can be used to guide the way we formulate research questions and methods, and the way we use the results of such research. In addition, we briefly discuss a project in progress, in which we ourselves attempt to apply the process laws that govern educational activities. Finally, we report about a discussion about the usability of the process laws, both in educational research and in the classroom, as was held during our workshop at the Mind, Brain, and Education Conference, November 2014.