This article presents a critical review of complexity theory in relation to educational research. The ‘analytical reductionist’ approach is one in which the educational researcher seeks to reduce complex wholes to particular factors and to identify correlations between them and desirable outcomes. Complexity theory shows how this approach in social research is both unreliable within its own terms of reference and misdirected. Complexity theory is characterised by a number of features. These include recognition that educational systems contain multiple variables. These connect in non‐linear and dynamic ways, i.e. where factors are seen to interact in a causal relationship the effects do not necessarily relate proportionally to the cause, and few factors may interact with many and many may interact with few. The crucial point of focus is on (a) the nature of the connections that are products of previous interactions reaching into the particular history of the organisation, and (b) the constitutive nature of relationships between interacting factors. Three broad conclusions emerge. The first is that contrary to the promise of reductionist analytical methodologies, research cannot deliver the specific kinds of information that are expected to inform policy and practice. The primary role of educational research becomes one of providing descriptions and explanations that provide a broader perspective on development in which decisions are primarily situation‐specific. The second is to recognise that school improvement (a) rests on problematic assumptions about desirable outcomes and (b) is dependent on multiple interacting variables and is thus likely to be local and temporary. The third conclusion is that, rather than seeking to understand schools in terms of factor analysis, research needs to look at the nature of information flow and its constitutive impact on clusters of possible causes and effects.

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This paper considers the impact of complexity theory on the way in which we see propositions corresponding to the reality that they describe, and our concept of truth in that context. A contingently associated idea is the atomistic expectation that we can reduce language to primitive units of meaning, and tie those in with agreed units of experience. If we see both language and the reality that it describes and explains as complex, this position becomes difficult to maintain. Complexity theory, with its emphasis on non-linear and dynamic interactions between multiple variables, within indeterminate and transient systems, supports the case for a connectionist and holistic analysis. Theories are more likely to be under-determined by evidence and open to interpretation, with the potential for 'certainties' weakened. If educational situations are complex, then the drive towards specific and focused research findings that will support policy and practice, and the associated notion of control, is illusory. Rather than providing evidence for prescription, research is thus understood as descriptive and explanatory, within a range of interpretative possibilities. Action takes place within a necessarily incomplete and constantly changing situation, more appropriately understood in terms of survival than control.

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