Systems thinking: critical thinking skills for the 1990s and beyond

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118 System Dynamics Review Volume 9 Number 2 Summer 1993Fig. 4.Overpopulationfeedback loopand (4) the way in which each factor works to cause the effect is leftimplicit (represented only by the sign of the coefficients, i.e., this factorhas a positive or a negative influence).The systems thinking paradigm offers alternatives to each of theseassumptions. First, according to this paradigm, each of the causes islinked in a circular process to both the effect and to each of the othercauses. Systems thinkers refer to such circular processes as feedbackloops. Figure 4 illustrates two such loops. The shift from one-way tocircular causality, and from independent factors to interdependentrelations, is a profound one. In effect, it is a shift from viewing the worldas a set of static, stimulus-response relations to viewing it as an ongoing,interdependent, self-sustaining, dynamic process. It will also causestudents to think in a very different way about what is going on in theworld around them.The third assumption implicit in the laundry list paradigm is thatfactors have a static weighting. By contrast, in the systems thinking view,as Figure 4 suggests, the strength of the closed-loop relations is assumedto wax and wane over time. Some loops will dominate at first, other loopswill then take over, and so on. Therefore, addressing a problem is notseen as a one-shot deal. Rather, it is considered necessary to think in termsof ongoing, interdependent relations whose strengths vary over time,partly in response to interventions that may have been implemented intothe system.The final assumption associated with laundry list thinking is thatcorrelation is good enough for explaining how a system works. Thesystems thinking paradigm challenges this regression analysis approach,offering in its place operational models of how things work. Thus, forsomeone steeped in the systems thinking paradigm, it would not beenough to identify the factors that are correlated with overpopulation.Instead, it would be necessary to actually offer an operational explanationof how overpopulation is generated. The contrast between the correlationaland operational models of the overpopulation process is illustrated inFigures 5 and 6.The systems thinking paradigm, when combined with thelearner-directed learning process, will breed students who are hungry tounderstand how things really work and who will continually be lookingfor how these workings might
Richmond: Systems Thinking 119Fig. 5. AcorrelationalmodelFig. 6. Anoperationalmodelchange over time as a consequence of shifts in the relative strengths of theunderlying dynamic relations.Thread 3: learning toolsTo fully meld a learner-directed learning process with the systems thinkingparadigm, it is essential to have the right set of learning tools available forclassroom and out-of-classroom use. The tools of a teacher-directed,laundry list learning process—textbooks and blackboards—will play asmaller role in a nontransmit, active learning process. Textbooks operate,in effect, as purveyors of silent lectures. Students read them, for the mostpart, for the same reason they currently go to class—to assimilate content.On blackboards teachers can chart static relations and display lists.However, blackboards are not well suited to analyzing a system'sdynamics. To support an inquiry-oriented, learner-directed learningprocess, textbooks and blackboards must share the stage with an emergingtool: the personal computer. The personal computer, with its rapidlyexpanding sound and graphic animation capabilities, holds the
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