Systems Approach
People and systems
As you were growing up it was probabaly not too many years before you
realized that people were complex. A few more years of experience and you
also learned that the interactions between people could be very complicated.
If a systems approach could help us better understand the interactions in
a forest, how about people?
Total Quality Management (TQM)
A systems approach was first used in industry by D.W. Deming. Deming is often credited with being one of the first to begin looking at the system as a whole to improve it. The Total Quality Management (TQM) concept that came to business in the 70's and 80's was built upon the work he did in Japan in the 50's. Deming believed that the workers were often limited in doing their best work by the structure of the workplace. TQM insists that every member needs to have an understanding of the overall goal, and to see clearly her/his role in achieving that goal. Rather than having a manager oversee workers by telling them how to best do their job, TQM involves the workers in the decision-making process. This builds on a couple of important ideas. First, those who are closest to the actual work know best about the work and how to improve it. Second, multiple minds lead to better results. Third, people who feel they play an important role in the success of the business will do their best without a boss having to make them work.
Systems for schools
Success in business with assembly lines in the early part of the 20th century led to adoption of similar ideas in schools (e.g. grade levels, class periods, lesson plan objectives). As systems thinking has shown success in business, those ideas have been adopted by schools in the last 20 years. Schools are not the same as businesses, and therefore procedures that lead to more production or greater profit do not similarly lead to more A’s or better learning in schools. However, understandings gained about relationships can be transferred - a systems approach to understanding the complexity of learning in schools will yield greater results than that of imagining schools as an assembly-line factory.
Here in Indiana, systems thinking is at the heart of the school improvement efforts mandated by Public Law 221. School improvement plans need to have a whole school approach with all parts of the school interacting together towards a common goal. The law also mandates site-based decision-making, where those closest to the learners (staff, parents, teachers, and administrators) make school improvement decisions.
For schools, the value of the systems approach is:
1) to keep a focus on the big picture; the overall focus of the school.
Decisions are made that are coherent with that focus while consideration
is given to the perspectives of the whole school, the classroom, the student,
the teacher, the parent, etc.;
2) to allow those closest to the learning to have a greater impact on decisions
affecting the learning;
3) to view school as a complex interconnected set of relationships; relationships
that create a culture and which can be changed to improve the learning environment
for more success.
As a systems thinking approach has led to different ways of working, there
has been less stress on individuals making decisions and more on groups.
More heads means more possible solutions, multiple perspectives means better
understanding, and better understanding means support of all the members
of the group in reaching goals.
IPSP
Module Series