Chaos theory: lessons on educating equality and leadership

Chaos is a state of complete disorder and confusion. Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary branch of mathematics focusing on dynamic systems whose ostensible disorder is influenced by regulations extremely vulnerable to early conditions. Education embraces three principal elements: curriculum, teaching and assessment. Each is a hot political topic, they run deep, for four collective reasons: personal, social, cultural and economical. The quest for equality in education requires collective synchronisation from each perspective, but at present no such harmony exists, in large measure because of chaos.

Swift career progression and national training number promotion demands steep learning curve trajectories from early year (phase I) trainees. But despite apparent parity of esteem in training programme selection, faced with frequent curriculum upgrades, stiff examination hurdles and hidden curricular variation, differential attainment burgeons and malady lurks.1 Forecasting behaviour is the holy grail of social science, yet prognostic accuracy is volatile and discouragingly poor. Health is all about people and education about leadership, and consequently modern medical organisations are inherently disorganised. Individuals or organisations existing within similar environments reveal quite different behaviours, despite comparable performance governance. Moreover, the concept of chaos is distinct from other flaws in practical research, including chance, intangible extrinsic factors and the tyranny of metrics; yet given its importance, this theory has received little learnt analysis from a medical perspective. To paraphrase: some shared systems are characterised by chaotic behaviour, precluding the possibility of accurately predicting performance and research should focus on identifying high-risk scenarios, so that training environments may be optimised, trainee resilience improved and effective counter measures implemented.

In mathematics, physics and similar non-social scientific arenas, the existence of chaotic systems is well established. Evidence for chaotic behaviour in social science emerged in the late 1980s and there are at least two useful indicators of chaos.2 First, …

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