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Session Title: What is Systems Thinking? The Ongoing Debate
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Panel Session 215 to be held in Centennial Section D on Thursday, Nov 6, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the Systems in Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Laura Colosi,
Cornell University,
lac19@cornell.edu
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| Abstract:
This panel offers insight into why people in evaluation (and many other fields), are drawn to systems thinking. The reasons for its growing popularity are diverse and beneath these reasons are that it offers a model for thinking differently. Despite this allure, there is disagreement about what constitutes systems thinking, and it's meaning is ambiguous. The recent article in Evaluation and Program Planning seeks to address and eliminate some of this ambiguity so that the reader may gain more insight into what systems' thinking is and, therefore, how to apply its main ideas to a particular field or practical context.
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The False Dichotomy: Methodological Pluralism and Universality
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| Derek Cabrera,
Cornell University,
dac66@cornell.edu
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The question ''what is systems thinking?'' cannot be answered by a litany of examples of systems thoughts, methods, methodologies, approaches, theories, ideas, etc. Such a response is analogous to answering the biologist's question ''what is life?'' with a long list of kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genus and species. Taxonomy of the living does not provide an adequate theory of life. Likewise, taxonomy of systems ideas, even a pluralistic one, does not provide an adequate theory for systems thinking.
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Integrating Systems Thinking into Evaluation Practice
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| Laura Colosi,
Cornell University,
lac19@cornell.edu
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This panel addresses the perceived lack of practical tools available for systems thinking as defined by the DSRP model. There are several tools and methods that go beyond a simple set of written methods or proposed methodologies (e.g., SSM, CST, etc). These tools have been assessed in both evaluation studies, and case study research conducted with academic researchers, graduate students in many fields, elementary and secondary school teachers, and parents of children of different ages. The tools presented go well beyond the tools and methods of existing models of systems thinking with the additional benefit of being universally applicable.
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The Big Picture
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| Derek Cabrera,
Cornell University,
dac66@cornell.edu
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| Laura Colosi,
Cornell University,
lac19@cornell.edu
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This panel explicates the broader implications of the authors proposed definition of systems thinking and the DSRP model as:
1) a general model of thinking,
2) as the missing code necessary for evolutionary epistemology, and
3) as a general theory of things.
This will in turn, clear up the misunderstanding that the DSRP model is a set of 4 elements rather than formalism for thinking with complex structure and predictive internal dynamics. There are many other uses of the DSRP model, in particular as a universal 'theory of things'. In our paper, we took a perspective on DSRP in which we attempted to explain its utility as a model of thinking systemically in evaluation.
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