Reflection: Systems Thinking
- paulasmith9
- Sep 26, 2023
- 4 min read
Reflecting on system thinking and my years of dealing with systems, I realize that my prior knowledge looks at it from a macro, meso, and micro level. I learned more about systems thinking from our discussion of a video we watched called "The Milk System" and how many different aspects of that system influenced how cows produced milk, compared to how the education system promotes students' learning. I learned about the interdependencies and how internal and external factors could impact the system's structure. Instead of breaking down into components, systems thinking examines the whole and its relationships (Konkarikoski et al., 2010). The theoretical framework for systems thinking is systems theory.
Our last discussion discussed economics as a driving force in "The Milk System" video. When you look at the relationships from "The Milk System," you have the farm workers, the manager of the farm workers, office managers, administration, and others. You also have the executive leadership and others who run the company and own the cows to produce the milk. It describes the organization of the company. As I observed the video, I did denote that its organization was similar to the Star Model (Galbraith, 2014, p. 17). They had workers (people), strategies, structures, processes, and somewhat of a reward system (Galbraith, 2014, p. 17).
The father and son chased the dollars as they went from 100 to over 750 cows. He and his son own about six farms. They were entrepreneurs, but through their decision-making, they chose economics over ecological sustainability. They had many strategies for inseminating the female cows so they could birth female calves. The process serves two purposes: for milk and another female calf to the farm for milk. They would feed the cows with all kinds of feeds instead of letting them graze in a pasture. I remember being on the farm with my grandparents in the country, and when cows graze on green fields, it is the healthiest for them. Yet, the cows could not go outside while automation systems sucked all their milk out. They even had robots to clean up the manure off the ground to alleviate any worker exposed to horrible conditions like the cows. The film almost had me sign up for animal rights advocate.
In education, you have almost the same type of organization design with cafeteria workers, janitors, bus drivers, teacher's assistants, teachers, administrative workers, counselors, assistant principals, principals, school administrators, policymakers, and others who comprise the organization. You have legislation establishing the rules and standards governing how schools should educate their students. Public, private, non-profit, virtual or online, home school, charter school, or other type of school. School administrations set governance at the state and municipal levels. The processes should be consistent with the overall goal of the students—academic achievement in learning. However, politics, economics, and other internal or external forces might impact interdependence. Sometimes, the driver is not about the student's knowledge but what percentages passed that standardized test, which brings in more funding from the state.
I want to learn more about the interconnectedness or interconnectivity of a system because it allows your lens to examine the entire education system (John Boardman & Sauser, 2008). This concept has resonated with me in the past few papers I have written on connectedness. In this instance, almost the same idea with risk and protective factors can impact a student or individual, except we are talking about it from a systems perspective. I research some journal articles in this area, and it has been like the movie "Mindwalk." See the references for those journal articles. I am a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learner, so watching the movie kept me engaged and captivated.
The current educational system I am involved in is the Canvas at the Department of Learning Technologies at the University of North Texas. I am a doctoral student working with it as a student and a teacher assistant. The Canvas interface is pretty good. If you can understand how the structure works, it can be a seamless process to configure your course and the learning activities you have laid out in our syllabus. A template with modules and activities should be an easy copy and paste, or you can take it further and power automate the tasks. Some professors are tech-savvy and can have their course content ready to go, while others constantly struggle. The navigation is user-friendly if configured correctly.
References
Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations: Strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels. John Wiley & Sons.
John Boardman, & Sauser, B. (2008). Systems thinking: Coping with 21st century problems. CRC Press.
Konkarikoski, K., Ritala, R., & Ihalainen, H. (2010). Practical Systems Thinking. Journal of Physics: Conference Series.
Koral Kordova, S., Frank, M., & Nissel Miller, A. (2018). Systems thinking education—Seeing the forest through the trees. Systems, 6(3), 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems6030029
Mildeová, S. (2012). Mental shift towards systems thinking skills in computer science. Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science, 25-35.
Yoon, S., Goh, S., & Yang, Z. (2019). Toward a learning progression of complex systems understanding. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 16(1).
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