Systems Thinking and Your Daily Soda#
I was listening to Planet Money as I ran errands this morning, and the episode was about price pack architecture. It is a crash course in business systems thinking in a bite-size package. But do not worry – there is a significant amount of thought that goes into deciding how big that bite-size package should be. This covers what goes into a multinational company making local decisions based on international results, how to diversify and maximize market penetration without adding new products, and new ways they are thinking of consumer needs.
Public and Private Educational Systems#
This episode highlights how all systems are much more complex than they appear on the surface. The work we have been doing analyzing educational systems brings that into focus. I work in a private school and have provided a list of all the departments within the bounds of the school itself, but the reality is there are external systems that directly and indirectly impact our educational system itself. I also have an advantage: the head of my school makes sure to focus on discussing all the systems that help our school run each year. We also built a new building, which provided some interesting insight into the ways that our neighborhood and local politics can impact the education of private school students.
We reference standards created outside of our organization to participate in norms-referencing standardized testing. Enrollment in public schools is a combination of choice applications and neighborhood demographics (subtracting the families who choose alternatives to public school: private, parochial, or homeschool options). Enrollment in private schools allows us to attract students from outside the direct area, but we are impacted by the neighborhoods and physical structures we are in, as well as large community systems like the traffic system. Some people are willing to drive an hour to bring their children to school, but the logistics of transporting children to and from school is a part of the decision to enroll or not enroll in any given school.
Holonic Thinking#
We are all holons, both being parts of systems and made up of systems ourselves. This duality, and the unique collection of systems we are part of and the ones we embody, exists in every living being on the planet. I once again think back to the Tokuhama-Espinosa & Borja (2023) and the work she did mapping our educational system’s curricular expectations to the underlying cognitive requirements, and then further mapping it to different neurological regions of the brain.
Theory and Conclusion#
In 6220, I have been working with the theory of planned development This theory can be described as a systems theory that is focused on the human intention to behave in a certain way. One critique of the theory is that intention is not actual behavior. This is where the intersection of internal systems (which the theory of planned behavior focuses on) and external systems (the actionable external world) collide and can either be a hindrance, help, or neutral in achieving our goals. This tension between internal and external systems exists in education as well, at every level of the holonosphere. Administrative decisions and pedagogical proclivities can be in harmony, in tension, or your administration might be hands-off and not have an active role in your learning environment at all.
I have always considered myself somebody who was good at considering the systems that intersect to help guide my thinking. As I have gotten older, though, I have realized that I almost always have a discussion where I go “Oh! I hadn’t considered that!” when discussing what impacts a decision I am working towards. We all have blind spots in what we consider, and one of the best ways to ensure you are considering as many systems as you need to is to always talk to other people in the process.
References
Ajzen, I. (2020). The theory of planned behavior: Frequently asked questions. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 2(4), 314–324. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.195
Tokuhama-Espinosa, T., & Borja, C. (2023). Radical neuroconstructivism: A framework to combine the how and what of teaching and learning? Frontiers in Education, 8, 1215510. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1215510