Stories/Lived Experiences
Authors: Joan O’Donnell, Systems Thinking Trainer and PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning (ALL) Institute, research funded through the Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT) and Bob Williams, Systems Thinking Practitioner, Trainer and Evaluator – Consultant
This blog is the first of a series of blogpost contributions outlining basic Systems Thinking concepts presented at the ADVANCE CRT Summer School that we helped to design in June 2022, held in Maynooth.
‘The Systems Thinking summer school opened up little doors in my mind to paths that had been unexplored previously. It’s like an added tool to my repertoire and if I get back into old ways of thinking and get stuck, I remind myself of that door. It makes exploring topics more exciting also because it’s more of an adventure with this way of thinking’. Ashley Sheil, PhD Scholar, Maynooth University.
The ADVANCE CRT Summer School focusing on Systems Thinking marked the largest and most ambitious event of the Science Foundation of Ireland PhD programme to date. It brought over 60 students and supervisors together for four days in a memorable event that was as much a celebration of being together in physical space as an opportunity to delve deeply into the richness that Systems Thinking offers research.
This introductory blog gives an overview of Systems Thinking and a sense of its importance for transdisciplinary research. It also outlines some of the topics that students experienced during that week.
Overview of Systems Thinking:
Systems Thinking is a transdisciplinary field with many influences including biology, mathematics, physiology, economics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, management studies, family therapy, engineering and computing. In simple terms, the systems field provides tools that describe, understand and address ‘complex’ – sometimes called ‘wicked’ – problems.
Its modern-day origins are closely linked to Alexander Bogdanov who published Tektology over a hundred years ago, the biologist Ludvig vonBertalanffy and Norbert Wiener who introduced the word ‘cybernetics’ (steermanship in Latin), and ‘feedback mechanisms’. Systems approaches were used extensively during the Second World War and developed substantially during the 1950s and 1960s; influencing practices as diverse as family therapy, organisational development and engineering. However, that is not to say that it is new: a systems worldview can be traced back as far as the earliest school of Ancient Greek philosophy from the 6th century BC and Taoism from the 4th century BC, both of which sought harmony between the natural and human worlds.
However, the Cartesian worldview that took hold in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forwarded the notion of the world as a machine, with the result that the scientific method, as it evolved since the 18th century, favoured the study of parts of the machine as ends in themselves. It broke things down into their individual components, analysed them in ways that ignored the stance of the observer (aka ‘objectivity’), and then assumed that the ‘whole’ could be understood by reassembling the parts. In contrast, Systems Thinking offers an antidote to complement this positivist scientific method by focusing more on understanding the relationship between the parts, and different people’s views of those parts, as a means of addressing complex issues.
The summer school explored ways to bring this kind of inquiry to life in their own research projects; but first, a few overarching words on how Systems Thinking supports research:
Relevance of Systems Thinking to research: Systems Thinking supports you to reframe your research situation and recognise your role in co-creating research with those affected by it. Firstly, it helps you navigate the complexity associated with taking a meta-view of a research project and to contextualise issues. You reframe your research as ‘wicked’ problems that that can contribute to improving situations rather than as ‘problems’ to be ‘fixed’. Secondly, it moves away from viewing problems as ‘things’; i.e. the ‘health system’ or the ‘IT system’, and instead perceives them more as human constructs that can be used as tools to explore how people understand reality. Finally, the constructionist foundation ask us to place ourselves as actors inside the research. You are part of the system you are exploring and not as supposedly objective outsiders. That new position implies you need to take responsibility to reflect on how you influence research outcomes, but also the what the broader practical, cultural and ethical consequences of your research are.
Summer School as an enacted process
Consequently, we (Bob and Joan) were tasked with the job of enabling students to think systemically about how their research fits into the real world and how the real world fits into their research. Our emphasis was not only about Systems Thinking but systemic practice. We dived right into working in cross-disciplinary groups and devised a rich understanding of systems concepts using a case study. This involved practising how to explore systemic interrelationships, multiple perspectives and critical boundary decisions. Boundary decisions are important systemically because, contrary to popular ideas, Systems Thinking is not about including everything, but instead being very systemic about what needs to be left out so that we can actually do something.(See diagram 1). The methods we used do this will be covered in follow-up blogs. For now, here is a flavour of the topics we covered during the week.
A rich variety of masterclasses were offered over the following two days:
Evidencing in Research: Dr Martin Reynolds, Senior Lecturer in Systems Thinking: STEM Engineering and Innovation at the Open University, led a session designed to develop students’ systems literacy. This entailed an exploration into how ‘facts’ never speak for themselves, which necessitates making systemically-informed reasoned cases for supporting and/or questioning interventions.
Patterns of Strategy & Eco System Modelling: Patrick Hoverstadt and Lucy Ho from Fractal Consulting introduced us to a unique approach to harnessing systemic forces acting both in organisational and meta systems. By focusing on the relationships between organisations, researchers can better understand how to tap into them to make them work for our research.
Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) for supporting research: CSH provides a powerful tool for getting to grips with the practice, politics and ethics of making those boundary decisions. This session, led by Martin Reynolds, focused on how CSH can help surface these issues associated with, and arising from research practice.
Systems Principles:
The laws and principles upon which Systems Thinking was founded as a discipline provide insight on how, when and why systems remain stable and change at the same time. These principles also support an understanding of what happens when they collapse into new forms or disintegrate. Lucy and Patrick led this session where we took a handful of principles and applied them to a given situation to harvest insights that support the endeavour of doing research in real-world contexts.
Co-inquiry using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM):
The final day was led by Professor Ray Ison, also from the Open University and President of the International Federation for Systems Research. He brought us through a systemic co-inquiry asking “what do you do when you do what you do? i.e. claim to do research? Or supervise research?”. By mapping the responses to these questions, we explored not just our own theories of how things change, but the implications for taking ethical responsibility of our epistemological commitments. We were invited to develop our systems literacy, and develop our Systems Thinking-in-practice capability using some basic concepts from Soft Systems Methodology.
It is impossible to convey the energy and commitment that trainers and students brought to co-creating a rich learning experience, that engaged head, heart and gut in the business of recovering a systemic sensibility to our research practice. We were joined by a cadre of very engaged supervisors that made the experience feel like a unique collaboration between peers. In the background, as there always is in any successful event, was the phenomenal team of Luis Gómez de Membrillera and James Duggan from ADVANCE, who did everything in their power to ensure that everything ran smoothly. Which it did!
Participants experienced eureka moments and world-altering realisations about how to approach research topics across a broad spectrum of disciplines from psychology to mathematics, to engineering. The success of the event is conveyed in the following student accounts:
‘Among other excellent opportunities, the summer program gave me the chance to stand back and create a bigger picture that encompasses my study topic. By doing this, I felt more assured and able to carry on my study more consciously. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to learn about extremely practical System Thinking strategies like the rich picture, CSH and PQR framing – they are helpful to me in both my studies and daily life. In the end, I developed a stronger belief in cooperation and teamwork’. Ramin Solimani, PhD Student UCC.‘Systems Thinking gave me the tools to gain a better perspective of my research project. I can see a much broader view of the project while still seeing all of the intricate details. Also, for the first time, I can see the interconnections and all relationships between the different elements, stakeholders etc’. Stephen Sheridan, PhD student, TCD.
In addition to a beer or three and too many sandwiches, the very act of coming together, creating a system of researchers bound by a common identity and facilitated through a common language was, in truth, Systems Thinking in action. In addition, students also had the opportunity in the final hour of the workshop to consider the ‘now what?’. Furthermore, that hour was only just a start. Bob outlined his experience of starting on the systems journey:
Be useful. Use systems ideas when you think they would add something useful to your research
Be committed. Start with an aspect of the systems field that interests you
Be careful. Using systems ideas could change your relationship with key colleagues and stakeholders
Be safe. Seek low risk, medium reward first.
Be creative. Don’t be a purist; adapt, invent, modify but stick to the core principles
Plus … have some fun in the process.
And future blogs will go into more detail about what these five items mean for your research practice. The next blog will explore, systemically, the important issue of drawing the line between the focus of your research and its scope. The focus makes it doable; the scope makes it relevant. Think about that.
This blog has emanated from research supported in part by a Grant from Science Foundation Ireland under Grant number 18/CRT/6222. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Science Foundation Ireland.