System Definition, System Worldviews, and Systemness Characteristics

Dori, Dov; Sillitto, Hillary; Griego, Regina M.; McKinney, Dorothy; Arnold, Eileen; Godfrey, Patrick; Martin, James N.; Jackson, Scott; Krob, Daniel

doi:10.1109/jsyst.2019.2904116

Cited by 40 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Systems cannot be understood simply by gaining an understanding of the parts because a system is greater than the sum of its parts [4]. In other words, a "system is an arrangement of parts or elements that together exhibit behavior or meaning that the individual constituents do not" [5] (p. 2).…”

Section: Reductionism and Systemismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using elements as an example again, this means that EL accounted for the identification of up to four (4) more elements by students from Drawing A to Drawing B during the experiment. Furthermore, this means that STL accounted for the identification of more than four (4) elements (i.e., five (5) or greater) by students from Drawing A to Drawing B. The fourth (4) column in Table 15 shows the number (and percent) of students who scored greater than the threshold for each concept.…”

Section: Expected Learning and Systems Thinking Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The fourth (4) column in Table 15 shows the number (and percent) of students who scored greater than the threshold for each concept. The fifth (5) and sixth (6) columns in Table 15 show the average score percentage for EL and STL respectively. These percentages represent the average student's score composition in terms of EL and STL.…”

Section: Expected Learning and Systems Thinking Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Method for Measuring Systems Thinking Learning

Taylor

Calvo‐Amodio

Well

2020

Systems

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The myriad of problems facing the world today are increasingly complex, dynamic, and transcend multiple domains. This necessitates the need for trans-disciplinary approaches capable of providing a framework to help solve these problems. Systems thinking provides the skills necessary for people to approach these types of problems. However, a lack of awareness and understanding of systems thinking hinders a potential systems-literate and systems-capable society. Systems thinking is comprised of four underlying concepts or skills: distinction-making, organizing systems, inter-relating, and perspective-taking. The path to becoming a systems thinker follows a process comprised of three levels—sensibility (awareness of systems), literacy (knowledge of systems), and capability (understanding of systems)—repeated across multiple learning phases. During this research study, a method was defined to measure whether non-experts learned the underlying systems thinking concepts according to this learning process. An experiment was conducted with 97 middle and high school students who were asked to draw a fish-tank system before and after being taught to apply the systems thinking concepts as skills for identifying elements, interactions, and roles/purposes. The results provide evidence to conclude that student learning of systems thinking significantly increased from the first drawing to the second drawing.

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Section: Reductionism and Systemismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Expected Learning and Systems Thinking Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Expected Learning and Systems Thinking Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Method for Measuring Systems Thinking Learning

Taylor

Calvo‐Amodio

Well

2020

Systems

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“…It is worth noting that Calvo‐Amodio's (2019) purposeful human activity system differs from Checkland and Vickers's approach in one key way: whereas Vickers and Checkland adopt a constructivist approach (systems only exist in our minds), Calvo‐Amodio employs a moderate realist approach (systems exist in our minds but also exist in the real world). This concept of worldviews is described in more detail by Dori et al (2020). Furthermore, the design of the conceptual system, through the purposeful engineering (granting of causal powers) of ideas, cultures, meanings and models about the conceptual system, can help facilitate the interaction between the thinking about the system and the doing of activities within the system.…”

Section: Developing a Taxonomy For Identifying And Delineating Purposmentioning

confidence: 99%

A taxonomy of purposeful human activity system signs as a means to improving systems literacy

Kittelman

Calvo‐Amodio

2020

Syst Res Behav Sci

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The system of communication plays a critical role in the design, management and change management of purposeful human activity systems. This occurs not only in the verbal and written form of communication but also in the assimilation and interpretation of purposeful human activity system signs. The authors propose that purposeful human activity systems exhibit four types of signs: those indicating the system's persisting meaning, behaviour, structure and process. These signs together indicate the current state of the purposeful human activity system they emerge from and form the foundations of the communication system. Currently, the connection of signs back to a communication system has been largely unexplored, and a taxonomy for identifying and delineating signs in this research context does not exist. The authors present the theoretical virtue of purposeful human activity system signs and a taxonomy developed for identifying and delineating system signs with application for novice system analysts.

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“…In this way it has been possible to characterize what a system is, using concepts that are applicable to any of the types of systems that can be found in our known world: natural systems, man-made systems and social systems. Introduction Dori D. et al (2019) point out that Aristotle raises the first known idea about the nature of systems: "the whole is something beyond its parts and not just the sum of all ". This statement describes the feature that has been considered more distinctive and exclusive of systems: emergent properties.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

On the essence and ontology of systems

Perez

2020

OSJ

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In the first part of this research, publications were reviewed from 1968 to 2019, with the aim of observing how the definition of system has evolved, since it was established by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy. From this review it is concluded that this definition has not changed in essence, all the researchers consulted use concepts similar to those of Bertalanffy, when they propose a definition of system. However, according to the specific field of work, the authors add their own characteristics.Bertalanffy's definition and all that have been derived from it postulate that a system is a conglomerate of interacting components. But after a brief reasoning it is concluded that everything in our universe meets that definition. A system is an atom, a cell, a chair, a galaxy, or the universe as a whole. So systems theory would be the theory of everything, which is too broad and imprecise.Vagueness and imprecision have been eliminated when the concept of system has been applied to specific fields of knowledge and human activity and in each of them characteristics have been added that define more specifically the systems that are relevant to certain technical or scientific specialties. However, this has caused that many concepts developed in one field cannot be extended or used in others.In this work, a system definition is established that allows us to clearly and precisely describe what these entities are and distinguish them from other concepts and entities. In this way it has been possible to characterize what a system is, using concepts that are applicable to any of the types of systems that can be found in our known world: natural systems, man-made systems and social systems.

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System Definition, System Worldviews, and Systemness Characteristics

Cited by 40 publications

References 11 publications

A Method for Measuring Systems Thinking Learning

A Method for Measuring Systems Thinking Learning

A taxonomy of purposeful human activity system signs as a means to improving systems literacy

On the essence and ontology of systems

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