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Understanding Systems Thinking

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This is an excerpt from our upcoming book Growing Great Human Beings. Our previous post was an introduction to our values. This chapter explores how important systems thinking is to understand children's actions and reactions as well as our own as adults.

At Enhancing Learning, our guiding framework considers learning as a complex and interactive process. We believe that optimal learning requires a holistic approach that nurtures the child’s strengths and preferences. Understanding the concept of Systems Thinking is crucial for you to understand why such a seemingly simple, five element framework (our Enhancing Learning Framework), can so effectively support a child’s development and learning.

Unfortunately, adults have mostly been taught to understand the world using a simplistic view known as Linear Thinking. Linear Thinking perceives events as sequential steps that cumulatively add up to a certain outcome. But human beings and in particular newly developing human beings, are much more complicated than a linear view can appreciate.

If you are familiar with Systems Thinking, then the rest of this book will provide you with tools and techniques that you can apply to support children as a parent, teacher or therapist, in a system focused approach. 

If you are new to Systems Thinking, don’t worry - we will give you a crash course now. You do already think and understand many things from a system’s approach - it has just never been made explicit to you. 

Shower Time

Let's explore the ultimate shower experience. We typically use this shower analogy at the start of a coaching session to explain Systems Thinking in a clear and quick way. While taking a shower might seem like a straightforward sequence of events that you follow to have an enjoyable shower experience, in reality there are actually lots of different systems involved and subconsciously we make constant adjustments as different factors impact our experience. Let’s explore the different systems and factors in more detail.

Systems don't operate in isolation:

    • Having a shower (usually) requires two systems - cold and hot taps.
    • Turning on the hot tap will not give you a great shower experience.
    • Turning on the cold tap will not give you a great shower experience.
    • The two tiny internal systems (taps) must be adjusted by you to achieve your desired temperature.
    • Then there are a range of other factors that may also impact on your ultimate shower experience. 

External and Internal Factors Impact on the System: 

    • Water temperature can change when someone else in the house uses the water. Have you ever been enjoying your shower when someone else in the house decides to run a sink of water to do the dishes! It is amazing how quickly we can move to tweak the taps.
    • Water temperature feels different as your body system changes (heats up/ cools off). How often do you find yourself tweaking the taps during your shower.

Time Factors Impact on the System:

    • The time of day or even the season makes a difference to your ultimate shower experience. You may need additional heat sources during colder months and a higher water temperature.
    • The age of your shower in itself starts to impact on your experience (quite quickly for those relying on gas bottles with a nasty tendency to run out mid shower).
    • The shower nozzle may become clogged with scale over time slowly reducing pressure. 

Emotional Responses Impact the System:

    • You may have just been to an amazing hotel resort where the shower head provided a gentle but incredibly relaxing fall of water, there was only one tap and a gauge where you could set the desired temperature, while the towels were warmed and of an immense softness.
    • On return to your home, your own shower that may have previously been a great shower experience, now seems effortful, unfulfilling and nothing you can change in your current shower experience can change your emotional reaction due to that past experience.

Political Factors Impact the System:

    • Finally our shower experience can also be influenced by political factors such as: Slow flow showers, save water campaigns etc. 

There is a long list of things that in some direct or indirect way influence how well we can achieve the ULTIMATE SHOWER experience every day. That is the actual complexity behind what can be perceived as a relatively simple step by step sequence. This is what we mean when we encourage a systems thinking view of events.

Why is this knowledge important?

There are three main systems involved in any interaction between people, for example a teacher and learner in the classroom, a parent and child at home.

    • System 1 - the child
    • System 2 - the adult
    • System 3 - the environment

As in our shower example, with three systems involved, a mis-match can easily occur between one human system and the other, at any time.  To best support a child’s development, the adult needs to understand the numerous interactions between those three systems at a minimum. Additionally, time factors have an impact on those interactions so past events and anticipated future events that the child and/or adult is aware of will also influence the interactions between the systems.

Describing the difference between systems thinking and linear thinking is the best way to further show why a systems approach is more effective and responsive to the child’s needs.

Linear Thinking versus System Thinking

Many approaches to teaching children remain embedded in a behavioural paradigm which is a strongly linear thinking process. This step by step approach breaks down a complex process to simply look at what happens before the behaviour, the behaviour itself and then what happens after the behaviour.

    • A = antecedent (what happened just before)
    • B = behaviour (what the child did)
    • C = consequence (what did the child get out of doing the behaviour)

In this way, whether the adult is seeking to stop a certain behaviour (negative) or to have a behaviour repeated (positive), the adults focus on altering either the 'A' or the 'C' to try and get a change in the child's behaviour. 

Let’s consider the following scenario to highlight the difference between Behavioural/Linear Thinking and Systems Thinking:

A four year child with limited verbal language was observed by teaching staff pacing around and around the playground for some time. The adults moved away from the immediate vicinity and within moments the child would lash out at another child, quickly bringing the adults back to the playground area to sort things out.

Linear viewpoint: 

Analysis of Situation:

    • A = The child is pacing around & then the teachers moved away
    • B = He hurts another child  
    • C = The child is looking for attention 

Conclusion: Teachers believe that the first child deliberately waited for the teachers to leave the area so he could hurt another child. The intention they assume is that he is devious and seeking attention.

Result: Teachers establish rewards for not being aggressive (reinforcement) and consequences for aggression (punishment).

System viewpoint: 

Analysis of Situation:

Teachers realise:

    • That the child was pacing faster and faster, and trying to signal that their internal system was becoming overwhelmed. They were trying to communicate that they needed an adult's support in this moment.
    • That, as the child's stress chemical levels increased, the child was less likely to be able to reduce the stress chemicals on their own. 
    • They had misinterpreted the child's running as joy and so they had moved away. They could now see that the child was able to 'hold on' while the adults were close but once he could no longer see them, his stress chemicals peaked and he 'boiled over'.
    • Lastly, that by making another child cry out was an instinctive reaction that was guaranteed to ensure an adult returned to support him to manage his emotions and not the act of an aggressive child.

Conclusion: The child was struggling with his own emotions and was unable to verbalise these to the adults present. A series of system based accommodations were determined in order to better support the child.

System based accommodations implemented:

        1. Staff identify the child's actions that indicate they are not coping (pacing, running, appearing agitated).
        2. Individual support strategies are clearly outlined to those who work with the child and they are implemented at 'simmer point' not 'boil over' - when it is too late.
        3. When the child is running around faster and faster an adult needs to intervene and implement support strategies to reduce the chemical build up.
        4. Adults structure the environment to allow running around in a space away from the other children if needed.
        5. Teachers check in with the child before playground play to reduce the stress chemicals before his entry to the playground, as they understand the impact of their learning session on the child’s stress chemical levels.
        6. Teachers are alerted by the child's parents on days where high stress chemical build up is possible based on events that have occurred either the night before or in the morning (time and distance factors).

When a systems view of the situation is taken, more effective changes can be put in place that best support the child. But it is critical that every person supporting the child to understand the different systems in play.