Facilitating inquiry-based learning as a complex adaptive system

I argue that educators have a responsibility to engage with theirs and their student's immediate daily world. This engagement requires cultivating awareness of how our local immediate relationships in the world are at centre of the educational process. This thesis explores how embodying this engagement is brought about through the practices of complexity thinking and mindfulness. Using my experience of developing this thesis and an autoethnography of facilitating an inquiry-based learning course with undergraduate health sciences students, I outline an approach for how Complexity Science frames facilitating inquiry as a complex adaptive system. I describe how engaging the intrinsic dynamics of learners and working with self-organization enables facilitators to educate for capability and an understanding of complex systems. I undertake an exploratory critique and reflection of my work to examine the ethics of facilitating with complexity and the importance of mindfulness as a practice for engaging lived experience.