ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Bill Doll's works, and specifically his pedagogic creed, bring forward key ideas of inquiry, indeterminacy, and reflection. This project conveyed the complexity of story and considerations for fostering emergent thinking in a community of learners. Doll once said that "a good story, a great story, induces, encourages, challenges," and includes just enough "indeterminacy". The analytic mode of communication is explanatory, while the narrative is interpretive—and where meanings are constructed through dialogue, a dialogue that is transformational. Story is about the exchanging of ideas, where learning and understandings are formed. Stories invite complexity into the classroom and the curriculum. The term "complex conversations" has a particular meaning and can be found in the writings and presentations of Doll's students. Complex conversations couple the science of complexity theory with the culture of conversation to facilitate a poetic/poietic dance of mutual relations that invite opportunities for emergence of ideas.
