**4. Implications for teachers and teaching**

Notwithstanding its limitations, there is sufficient merit in the arguments for CAS-classroom comparisons to conclude that viewing the classroom through a CAS lens can illuminate a range of teaching and learning behaviors that might otherwise go unnoticed, and therefore unattended to. Among the drawbacks to an oversimplified, linear view of teaching and learning mentioned in part one of this chapter, is the risk that despite knowing better, teachers may teach in ways that presume a linear relationship between teaching and learning, missing opportunities to set conditions conducive to non-linear emergence. A CAS lens may encourage teachers to think non-linearly about learning processes, to become more attuned to collective, networked effects on learning, to see the critical potential in moments they might otherwise ignore, dismiss or want to prevent, and gain a more thorough appreciation of why pupil learning does not appear to augment in a steady trajectory. Arguments have been made that the extent to which classrooms reflect CAS-like qualities depends on how they are organized. More centralized organizational structures are less likely to encourage self-organized behaviors, whereas decentralized or distributed structures are more conducive to self-organization and emergence. In this final section I argue that teachers can occasion emergence through the organizational principles they employ and the degrees of autonomy they give to pupils, in order to capitalize on useful CAS-like classroom characteristics in the interest of learning. Part four draws on preliminary findings from my own recent research into emergent learning in a British year 4 classroom to explore how this might be achieved and what the benefits might be.
