Abstract:

"Complex thinking" is located within the epistemological debate that denies the separation between hard and soft sciences, which raises the need to articulate knowledge and ethics, and which considers reductionist thinking as a contemporary pathology proposes a paradigm that can distinguish without dismantling, and identify and associate without reducing. This is opposed to the principles of rule of disjunction and reduction that has prevailed since the seventeenth century.
The "paradigm of simplification" certainly allowed the great progress of scientific knowledge during the twentieth century, but by focusing on hyper-specialization it fragments the complex nature of reality.
Based on the above, this paper aims to determine how graduate students in economic and administrative sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) perceive that their teachers are including in their program contents the seven complex knowledges identified by Edgar Morin: detecting error and illusion, principles of pertinent knowledge, teaching the human condition, earth identity, confronting uncertainties, teaching comprehension, and human ethics.

We designed an instrument to make the measurement of variables reliable and validated it with a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.935. We sampled 384 students out of a total of 1500 registered in the graduate program in economic and administrative sciences at UNAM. We used a simple random sample from a finite population, a 95% confidence level, and an error probability of 0.05. We measured the relationship between the seven complex lessons of Édgar Morin and the four pillars of education proposed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Keywords:

Education, complexity, teaching, learning, knoledge.