On an empiristic level this dissertation is about military training of conscripts. Etnographic research at two units showed manifoldness and complexity, order and chaos, ideas and processes. The aim of the dissertation is to produce a theoretical tool to handle all this. The starting point is the idea of the General System Theory that terms referring to systems may be transferred from one theoretic field or level to another. Following this idea resulted in a set of terms emergence, feedback, homeostasis, and coding.

Using such terms in describing educational, e.g. subsystem, self-(re)organization, practice gives a rough description since the terms do not reflect all patterns typical of educational practice. The remedy was to create new adequate terms. Such work gave a set of terms called the Triple Network Model (TNM). This name relates to three aspects of reality: complexes, intentions and processes, here represented by the terms networks of needs, of strategies and of causes. Strategies originates from ideas called strategens; a strategenom is a set of strategens and may be seen as a verbal vision. The strategens reflect the teacher’s ideas about what is needed; a network of strategies reflects a network of needs. A teacher uses both co-ordinated and concurrent strategies. Needs of systems of subsystems give a network of needs that may produce rational and emotional motivation in a network of motivation. Initial and reflexive activities produce disorder, self-(re)organisation, causal spirals and circles.

In a network of causes you find not only the teachers’ strategic thinking and acting but also their personal needs etc. There may be conflicts between needs of individuals, overlapping and conducting systems. The TNM-analysis of the military units showed not only relations between needs, ideas, actions, processes, order and chaos, but also that TNM is an adequate and fruitful theoretical tool for such an analysis.