{"id":13432,"date":"2020-09-28T11:57:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T15:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/?p=13432"},"modified":"2020-09-28T11:59:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T15:59:43","slug":"systems-thinking-can-help-spark-and-sustain-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/systems-thinking-can-help-spark-and-sustain-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Systems Thinking Can Help Spark and Sustain Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transitioning education systems to be competency-based represents a massive shift from established ways of doing things. It involves shifting practice, reorienting outcomes, and building understanding and shared vision among educators, learners, families, community members, and other stakeholders. Teachers have to facilitate and assess learning differently. Students have to take more ownership of their learning journeys. Families have to develop new lenses for understanding children\u2019s development. Community members have to shift their expectations of what learning looks like, where it happens, and what supports the school’s need.<\/p>\n

Even though competency-based education has gained significant traction over the past several years and has been getting a boost through some responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the path forward with any transformation of its magnitude is rarely linear. For the approach to spread and put down roots, many people and organizations need to become champions and take action. Even after successful growth, on the ground can be lost, as what happened in Maine.<\/p>\n

The movement to spread competency-based education represents a form of systems change. Any systems change requires committing to doing something differently and then sustaining that effort over time, even after the initial swell of enthusiasm has waned. Transforming systems in this way is hard, long-haul work. However, the path can be eased by using aspects of systems thinking to shed new light on how education systems are operating today, where change efforts are intersecting with long-established patterns of behavior and systemic structures, what assumptions the people involved bring to the work, and the gaps between desired and actual outcomes.<\/p>\n

Systems thinking is a set of theories, tools, language, and mindsets that can help people grapple with the complex and interconnected world around us and make visible our perceptions of how it works. It can help us deepen our understanding of what stands between our aspirational visions and us and articulate what it might take to bring those visions to life.<\/p>\n

Some systems thinking\u2019s key tenets appear below.<\/p>\n