EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
SYSTEMS THINKING METHODOLOGIES FOR
IMPROVING EDUCATION DELIVERY
Article by Lynne du Toit ,Chief Executive Officer of Juta and Company, South Africa’s oldest publishing house and specialist academic and education retailer and the leading provider of legal and regulatory information, local student textbooks and learning and information solutions. Du Toit recently focused her Executive MBA dissertation on Systems Thinking for Executive Delivery.
Through stakeholder engagement, it became clear that the one factor, “parental involvement”, if addressed, could impact all the other variables towards improved learner motivation. It was here that the school leadership and teachers could intervene to bring about feasible and desirable change as illustrated in the causal loop diagram below.
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Systems Thinking resonates as a meaningful way to view educa- tion and the challenges that face us. Almost everything is or- ganised or organises itself in terms of systems, but the defining factor is that a system is a complex functioning whole which depends on the interactions between its parts. The whole is not the sum of the parts but rather emerges from the complex interrelationship between them.
VIABLE SYSTEMS
We may choose to consider the education system as a whole and, within that, the school as a system, the classroom as a system, or assessment as a system. Learning itself may be con- sidered a system. According to Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM), for a system to be viable, certain functions need to be present. These are
(i) (ii) (iii)
‘Implementation’ where the operational functions that are required to serve the purpose of the system are per- formed,
‘Co-ordination’ to ensure there is compatibility between the operational activities,
‘Control’ which monitors and audits these activities to ensure they conform to the policy established for the system and its functions.
‘Co-ordination’ and ‘Control’, along with ‘Development’ and ‘Policy’ constitute the management function of the system in focus.
This model is useful because it allows us to identify flash points that could lead to systemic failure. For example, through the auditing process we might identify that insufficient controls are in place in the classroom teaching system to ensure that cur- riculum delivery has occurred or, from a co-ordination point of view, that the assessments in place do not adequately assess the curriculum being taught.
Likewise, feedback from the environment, in this case the learner context, might show up de-motivation or unruly be- haviour which in turn will inform policy and innovation in the classroom. The key here is that if the feedback is not occur- ring regularly and the intelligence not acted upon speedily, the system does not adjust and ceases to be viable for its intended purpose.
CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS
As useful as this is, we should not be fooled by the apparent orderliness of a viable system: underpinning Systems Thinking is the fundamental notion of a complex web of unseen intercon- nected causal relationships that interact with one another to create the events experienced in the actual world.
Systems Thinking uses various tools to broaden the scope of experience and uncover the causal relationships impacting an event of concern so as to be able to address it. This means that there may not be a single solution, but rather multiple touch- points that can affect a desirable outcome.
While there will always be social and environmental factors outside the school leadership’s influence, there will be driv- ers that one might influence towards improvement, and each system will have its own unique combination of variables and drivers. It is understanding these at the relevant level of focus that can bring meaningful improvement.
For instance, at a particular school in the Western Cape struggling to improve learner performance, a key driver that emerged, amongst others, was a lack of learner motivation. This in turn had its own drivers: level of classroom care; teach- er time on task; teacher motivation; accountability; extent to which teachers are valued in the system and society; level of parental engagement and so on.
Support and Engagement
Level of Parental
Classroom Discipline
Level of
Classroom Discipline
Level of and learning
Time on
Motivation
Level of Teacher
task Motivation Learner
Quality of teaching
Accountability
Extent of
Classroom Care
Extent of
If ways could be found to increase the level of parental engage- ment and support, even in challenging social contexts, mutual ac- countability would impact teachers’ motivation and they would be more informed to provide appropriate classroom care.
At the same time, discipline would improve, reducing workload and improving time on task and the quality of teaching and learning.
Through this improved engagement and delivery, learners
would become increasingly motivated, reinforcing the level of teacher motivation, classroom discipline and parental support in a virtuous cycle, ultimately improving learner and school per- formance.
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
This is but one unique case and each school, district or sys- tem has its own unique challenges. However, by engaging with stakeholders to identify key drivers of a particular concern in a system, it becomes possible to identify and implement a series of small wins to feasibly bring about desirable change in the quest for continuous improvement.
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60 CHAPTER 3 | TOWARDS IMPROVED COLLABORATION
www.ed.org.za www.ed.org.za CHAPTER 3 | TOWARDS IMPROVED COLLABORATION 61
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