Participatory Systems Design for Schools as Self-Renewing Systems

• In Event: 66.086 - MTCC Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 66.086-6 - Critical Ways to Examine Systems Thinking in Teaching and Learning

Abstract

This paper advances Bela Banathy’s work on social systems design as a method of systems design necessary to schools as self-renewing organizations. Specifically, the author will advance a composite lens of soft-systems theory, autopoiesis in self-renewal, self-referencing systems, systems learning theory, self-creativity in systems, systems design theory, and social and systems consciousness. The author advances a theoretical perspective of school organizations as self-renewing systems, requiring a reconsideration of the school as a living and interactive system, interconnected and interrelated to multiple social contexts and social agencies, recognizing and reorganizing itself as old structures break down and new structures emerge..

Author

• Patrick M. Jenlink, Stephen F. Austin State University