(CZ) Žák jako složitý dynamický systém
(EN) The Learner as a Complex Dynamic System

The conception of education as a kind of directing the dynamic systems entails some new views of the educational process. From this angle the learner appears as a complex dynamic system, which is in continual inter-action with other dynamic systems (natural and social) and their components. As a result the learner’s behaviour is to a certain extent determined by the working of these systems. The latter are also inter-connected through a complicated network of mutual relationships changing with time. It is impossible to get to know and describe exactly the structures of all the systems that are in functional relationships to the learner, because the means for doing so are not available; it can only be done approximately. But even that represents a considerable degree of accuracy and is highly important for pedagogy. For no educational system can work successfully, if it ignores these systems and the trend and the power of their influence on the learner, and if it cannot regulate them. The teacher’s work brings about deliberate changes in the inner states of the learner. These states are inaccessible to direct observation and can also be judged only approximately on the basis of the outer manifestations, the behaviour of the learner. But the success in directing and predicting the development of the learner’s personality depends on as exact and complete a knowledge as possible of transformations taking place in each component of the system of the learner. The methods of cybernetics and programmed instruction may also be helpful in elaborating the theory of education. A class, being a group of learners organised in a certain way, may also be looked upon as a dynamic system with two distinctly different components, one directing, the other being directed. I f some of the pupils lag behind the others, the system feels it as a disturbance of its functions. This affects its structure, the homogeneity of the component being directed is disturbed, the process of guidance becomes more complicated and more difficult and the results are unsatisfactory.