Summary

Many of the reasons given for lack of engagement with active learning, such as lack of time or lack of training, are surface level symptoms that often have deeper structural causes. A systems thinking lens offers fresh insights into these deeper level or root causes. Systems thinking approaches allow practitioners and leaders to see beyond events and symptoms, thus moving them from implementing short-term fixes that do not have lasting value, to giving them understandings that allow more productive interventions addressing systemic issues. Such systemic solutions are also more likely to be resilient to external pressures such as changes in funding or policy and therefore to be sustainable beyond one individual or annual cycle.

A university behaves as a complex system which is made up of numerous interconnected ‘parts’. These ‘parts’ include students, staff, courses, administrative functions, learning resources, policies, and so on. A systems thinking lens allows practitioners to see how the parts influence one another, identifying cause-and-effect relationships and creating an understanding of how change in one can impact others. The systems thinking lens also looks beyond events and patterns of behaviour to explore systemic structures which include beliefs, attitudes and assumptions, and established practices (see Senge, 2006) often neglected when trying to make active learning happen for all.

Given the challenges in making active learning happen for all across places of higher education, a framework for strategically prioritising the embedding of active learning is needed. This chapter seeks to address that need by outlining a structured approach to applying systems thinking to identify the components of a system, categorise them and look for leverage points for positive change and thus:

• Offer a conceptual model for understanding a university or other institution of higher education as a system that includes attitudes, values and beliefs
• Provide a leverage points framework to offer new insights about where practitioners and leaders might intervene or offer influence to help make active learning happen for all
• Illustrate the application of the leverage point framework to an example to demonstrate how change might be enabled beyond one individual or annual cycle of implementation of active learning, and in an inclusive manner that reaches all learners studying any programme or course at a university or other place of higher education.

Introduction

Making active learning happen for all is an ambition that many universities have but then do not achieve, certainly not systematically across all programmes of learning and disciplines. This systematic embedding is important so all learners, regardless of existing levels or types of social, cultural, social-bonding and financial capital, can avail themselves of the opportunities active learning offers for their learning and development. Here the definition of active learning used is the one offered by Betts and used by the Active Learning Network:

In active learning, rather than the teacher ‘transmitting’ knowledge through lectures or reading, learners engage in a series of activities which require them to produce observable evidence of their learning. Where possible, these individual, pair and group tasks should aim to develop higher order thinking skills, emotional connection with content and tactile or physical engagement with the environment. (Betts, undated)

Active, as opposed to transmissive, education has many benefits for student learning and student outcomes (see for example Prince 2004; Kuh, 2008; Freeman et al., 2014) and yet is still not routinely embedded in day-to-day teaching and learning practices within higher education. Chickering and Gamson (1987) noted that active learning techniques underpin good practice in (undergraduate) education, highlighting:

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorising pre-packaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves (Chickering & Gamson, 1987, p. 4).

Given the long-standing evidence of active learning’s productive role in student learning, it is questionable whether universities can effectively achieve the first of their three main purposes of education, research and societal engagement (Hurth & Stewart, 2022), especially inclusively, if they do not employ active learning systematically. Indeed, given the evidence for the benefits of active learning on student engagement and attainment including cutting failure rates, Dirks (cited in Waldrop, 2015, p. 273) suggests that ‘at this point it is unethical to teach any other way’.

Despite this, to this day, there are lots of reasons given for not using active learning in its various forms. Arguments provided for not using active learning from a staff perspective include:

• Our discipline is special
• My students don’t like/want this
• Active learning doesn’t work
• Professional body requirements won’t allow it
• Developing and using it takes time away from things that really give recognition and reward/are important
• Resource availability and access e.g. timetabling constraints, time
• It’s not relevant (to my role)
• Lack of skills and capabilities.

The main message is that embedding active learning in day-to-day practices is still a challenge. We will revisit the above list later in the chapter and see what insights the proposed leverage points framework might offer in terms of understanding these reasons and identifying how we might productively intervene systematically to address them.

University as a (complex) system

Goodman (2018) suggests that using a systems thinking lens is useful when:

• the issue is important
• the problem is chronic, not a one-time event
• the problem is familiar and has a known history
• people have unsuccessfully tried to solve the problem before.

Certainly, the problem of making active learning happen for all fits the above. A university also fits the definition of a system as ‘any group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent parts that form a complex and unified whole that has a specific purpose’ (Kim, 1999, p. 2). A university is also a complex system, which is defined as

the system where there is a bidirectional non-separability between the identities of the parts and the identity of the whole. Thus, not only the identity of the whole is determined by the constituent parts, but also the identity of the parts are determined by the whole due to the nature of their interactions. (Estrada, 2023, p. 1143)

Systems thinking is a way of thinking about situations and problems within systems (Hoverstadt, 2022). It also employs methodologies and tools to help understand and analyse what is going on and where one might make improvements or fundamental changes to things. It also enables the user of systems thinking to visualise and understand why certain behaviours or patterns might be emerging because of interactions between different actors and parts in the system.

A system’s parts can be tangible (physical) things such as buildings, students, staff, learning resources and IT equipment, but also intangibles such as standards, ideologies, decision-making processes, goals, capabilities, academic expertise, or ‘the way we do things around here’ (Meadows, 2008). As we will see the intangibles are just as significant as the tangibles in the way a system behaves. As highlighted in the definitions above a system’s parts are interdependent, thus the behaviour of each part is influenced by the behaviour of others. Therefore, when thinking about why active learning isn’t happening for all, a systems thinking lens alerts us to the fact that this is not down to individual actors on their own (such as academic staff) or not having the right strategy (although both working in alignment will definitely help) but because of an interaction between all the system parts. Many of the interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information ‘signals that go to decision points or action points within a system’ (Meadows, 2008, p. 14). Meadows (2008) also notes that a system’s function or purpose, can be the least obvious (noticed) part of the system and yet have the most profound effect on its unique characteristics; we turn to purpose now.

Across the sector, both nationally and internationally a university’s purpose is typically ‘divided’ into three main areas education, research and societal engagement (Hurth & Stewart, 2022). And while students may have a different emphasis, in the UK at least they generally acknowledge all these purposes too (Shutt & Shutt, 2019). Clearly, different universities and other places of higher education in different contexts will place different emphases and have different resources available to them to achieve that purpose. Different actors in the system (those working and studying within a university context) will also have different mental models of that purpose and what that means for them. For example, some staff may believe their primary purpose (and that of their roles) is to discover and preserve knowledge and pass it on to new generations, closely connecting their own and the university’s research and education purposes. This will then influence their view of their role and purpose as an educator. Others, perhaps in universities with a strong emphasis on their education purpose set within a widening participation framing may be less focused on the preservation of knowledge per se but rather on critical engagement with the discipline(s)/knowledge(s) in hand and on critical thinking and problem solving in that context. We might see therefore how the orientation and mental models around purpose can influence orientation to active learning and engagement with it as a pedagogical approach. These mental models will be conveyed in the form of beliefs about the ‘correct’ way to teach and support learning and influence attitudes towards active learning.

The table below seeks to draw together this high-level view of the university system and its components.

As Senge (2006) highlights, by using systems thinking we can appreciate the underlying structures that are producing patterns of behaviour and the events that arise from those structures and behavioural patterns. As a result, rather than reacting to events we can take action that is more likely to result in sustainable change in a ‘desirable’ direction according to some agreed goal or purpose. This is not to suggest this is straightforward to achieve, but one thing a systems thinking lens enables us to do is to visualise these interactions and also recognise that attitudes, values and beliefs are in themselves structural in the systems thinking sense. That is, they are generative producing patterns of behaviour that ultimately result in (reactive) events. In turn attitudes, values and beliefs can themselves be influenced by the systemic context in which they take place. For example, an individual academic within a university system may have the belief that research has greater value than teaching and that belief is reinforced by cues within the system and that influences or sustains that belief. Similarly, measures of performance may be focused on certain types of indicators as well as privileging individual over collaborative effort. These beliefs and other influences in turn can sway behaviour and then how events unfold when, for example, someone is asked to spend time working with others to develop their teaching according to an active learning paradigm.

To make sense of this and identify a framework to support analysis we now turn to leverage points or places to intervene in a system.

Places to intervene in a (university) system to make active learning happen for all

Leverage points are ‘places in the system where a small change could lead to a large shift in behaviour’ (Meadows, 2008, p. 145). Of course, this requires a sound understanding of the system, its constituent parts and their interactions and the awareness that even if you understand where these leverage points might be you can make a change that pushes the system behaviour in the ‘wrong’ or undesirable direction. Nonetheless a leverage points lens can offer a framework that provides fresh insights on making active learning happen for all and for interrogating interventions that are designed to achieve that purpose to determine how effective they might be.

While acknowledging scope for refinement, Meadows (2008) organises leverage points into a hierarchy based on their potential to produce system-wide change and the degree of difficulty in applying them. In their list of leverage points, the higher the number the easier it is to apply that leverage point, but the less likely it will support system-wide (lasting) change. Conversely, the lower the number the more likely the resultant change will reach deeper into the system with a better chance of the change being sustained, but the greater the degree of difficulty in applying it to effect change.

The most influential leverage point in Meadows’s hierarchy are paradigms or deeply held beliefs, while the least effective are what she refers to as ‘numbers’, i.e. constants and parameters like subsidies, taxes, or standards. An example in the university context is teaching standards. Meadows highlights that ‘numbers’ are where at least 95% of our attention is typically directed when trying to make a change within a system, but ironically, they have the least leverage potential. This finding is supported by the work of Malhi et al., (2009) when investigating the types of leverage points that had been applied to complex food systems to make them more healthy, green, fair and affordable. Malhi et al. found that most efforts were indeed directed at these ‘lower order’ elements which had least leverage potential and noted the on-going work needed to achieve systemic change.

In the university context, this is not to say that we should ignore ‘numbers’ such as teaching standards in relation to making active learning happen for all, but if we only pay attention to ‘numbers’ we are unlikely to see the change we want to see in terms of systemically embedding active learning. This may also be in part because the standards are not reflective of the active learning paradigm and also ‘speaks to’ how different parts of the system interact, but this is jumping ahead a little and more of this later.

Others, including Malhi et al. (2009) as indicated above, have taken Meadows’s leverage points and applied them to different contexts including complex food systems (Malhi et al., 2009), campus building sustainability efforts (Posner & Stuart, 2013), obesity policy (Johnston et al., 2014) and to disrupt systemic racism (Watson & Collins, 2023). In doing so, while retaining the integrity of Meadows’s structure and insights, these researchers have grouped these leverage points into layers or categories to facilitate application and insight in their context. To reflect analysis of important factors in the university educative context, here Meadows’s 12 leverage points are placed into five categories. The five categories are: elements and resources; self-regulation and adaptation; structure; purpose and goals; paradigm. This grouping aims to make the application of the ideas feasible in practice and in a way that draws on understanding of the specific challenges of operating in university environments to make active learning happen for all. It is acknowledged that these are provisional groupings pending further critical review and development, but provide an initial leverage point framework to review a university system in the context of its educative purpose.

Table 2 below lists Meadows’s (2008) 12 leverage points positioned within the five categories. It then illustrates them with examples from a university system, before finally (final column) providing an aligned worked example operating through all the leverage points with the aim of promoting active learning systematically.

Table 2 aims to illustrate the twelve different leverage points and provide a categorisation that facilitates insight and action. Returning to our list near the start of the chapter of reasons given for not engaging with active learning, we can see the categories into which they might fall in table 3 below. It may be a useful exercise when someone gives a reason for not engaging with active learning to use the categories provided in the leverage points framework to help you determine what that might tell you about the systemic issues and actions that might be taken.

Table 4 below now takes these five categories of paradigm, purpose and goals, structure, self-regulation and adaptation, and elements and resources and applies these to another example. This example illustrates how misaligned components within the system in each of the different categories can interact and then interfere with making active learning happen for all. Table 4 then highlights interventions that may improve alignment and system functioning in relation to making active learning happen for all.

A systems thinking lens offers other tools such as feedback loops that we can employ once system components are identified. To complement the analysis in table 4, the feedback loop tool is used below in figure 1 to help to analyse the interactions between system parts that may be exacerbating the system behaviour that maintains unequal access to active learning opportunities, especially for under-represented student groups.

Figure 1 below thus illustrates how, set within a feedback loop analysis, the typology offered by the leverage points framework might help to scrutinise an existing situation with a view to identifying where we might intervene to effect desirable change across the university system. In figure 1, ‘R’ indicates this is a reinforcing (amplifying) loop, with the arrows showing the interactions between the components each positively reinforcing the other and maintaining, if not escalating, unequal access to active learning opportunities.

The analysis afforded by the above interaction map, in combination with table 4, helps to visualise why if we simply intervene, say, in the structural component of reward and recognition, we will likely effect some initial change but this will be difficult to sustain unless other components across the system are also adjusted. For example, someone on a teaching reward and recognition pathway may encounter a (local) departmental environment where others do not invest the same amount of time in teaching development as they do, or do not engage in using active learning for teaching. This individual is rewarded for their efforts but may feel as though they are ‘swimming against’ a cultural tide that make it hard to sustain their practice. Their students may also question why they are being taught differently in that practitioner’s module/course and may resent what they perceive as additional effort if they are mainly focussed on good grades alone. This may prove to be too challenging an environment for the individual to sustain their active learning practice and as a result they may do one or more of the following: move elsewhere where teaching using active learning is more systemically embedded and rewarded; form connections primarily externally to sustain their effort/feel valued/collaborate; decide the effort of maintaining active learning is not sustainable personally or professionally and so not continue to develop their practice in this regard; leave the profession altogether. In any of these scenarios the individual’s commendable practice is not easy to sustain and consequently the student (learning) experience is the worse for it if we accept, as argued here, that active learning techniques underpin good practice in education.

Conclusions and key takeaways

Given the evidence of its efficacy some may be surprised that active learning is not happening for all in our universities and other places of higher education. This chapter offers a conceptual model of a university as a system and a leverage points framework to offer new insights about where practitioners might intervene or offer influence to help make active learning happen for all. The framework categorises the leverage points into five groupings of: paradigms (mindsets); purpose and goals; structure; self-regulation and adaptation; elements and resources. It identifies the ways in which interactions between different system parts and actors within each of these categories may inhibit or act against the uptake of active learning for all and how we might visualise and identify points of leverage to shift things so that this is no longer the case. This systems thinking framework provides a starting point for further analysis. It aims to support practitioners, leaders, and other stakeholders in getting a better sense of the ‘big picture’, as well as gain insight into places to intervene to create change within the system. While, as hopefully this chapter has demonstrated, there are no ‘silver bullets’, i.e. the ‘one place’ to intervene that will make the difference; if there is one action at all that makes a real difference it is gaining an understanding of mindsets. This includes understanding our own mindset and how that relates to what we see as the university’s and our own purposes and goals. To this end, the following are the three main takeaways from this chapter:

• Mindsets or mental models drive system structure which in turn is the source of system behaviour. System behaviour reveals itself as a series of events over time (such as some staff or students not engaging with active learning) and to first understand those events and why they are happening we need to first surface and engage with paradigms (mindsets).
• Intervening in one place or leverage point, such as teaching standards or ‘training’ staff, will not drive engagement with active learning both on the part of students and staff. Rather, we need to understand how the various parts of the system interact if we want to achieve our goal of making active learning happen for all.
• By understanding leverage points we are more likely to be able to take action or focus our efforts in ways that will maximise the chance of our interventions resulting in a more systematic engagement with active learning for the benefit of our students, ourselves and, it is hoped, the university system and the wider society it serves.

Finally, this chapter offers a starting point to gain a more systematic understanding of how we might make active learning happen for all. It is hoped and anticipated that the lens it offers provides a springboard to further analysis using the systems thinking leverage points framework provided.

References

Betts, T. (undated). How do we define active learning? Active learning network. https://activelearningnetwork.com

Chickering, A. W. & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice. AAHE Bulletin 39, 3-7. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED282491

Estrada, E. (2023). What is a Complex System, After All?. Foundations of Science, 29, 1143-1170. 10.1007/s10699-023-09917-w. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371162175_What_is_a_Complex_System_After_All

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordta, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410-8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111

Goodman, M. (2018). Systems thinking: What, why, when, where and how. The systems thinker. https://thesystemsthinker.com/systems-thinking-what-why-when-where-and-how/

Hoverstadt, P. (2022). The Grammar of Systems From Order to Chaos and Back. SCiO Publications.

Hurth, V. & Stewart, I. S. (2022). Re-purposing Universities: The Path to Purpose. Frontiers in Sustinability, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2021.762271

Johnston, L. M., Matteson, C. L, & Finegood, D. T. (2014). Systems Science and Obesity Policy: A Novel Framework for Analyzing and Rethinking Population-Level Planning, American Journal of Public Health, 104(7), 1270-1278. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301884

Kim, D. H. (1999). Introduction to systems thinking. The systems thinker. https://thesystemsthinker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Introduction-to-Systems-Thinking-IMS013Epk.pdf

Kuh, G. D. (2008). High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Malhi, L., Karanfil, Ö., Merth, T., Acheson, M., Palmer, A., & Finegood, D. T. (2009). Places to Intervene to Make Complex Food Systems More Healthy, Green, Fair, and Affordable. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 4(3–4), 466–476. https://doi.org/10.1080/19320240903346448.

Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Posner, S. M. & Stuart, R. (2013). Understanding and advancing campus sustainability using a systems framework. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 14(3), 264-277. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-08-2011-0055

Prince, M. (2004), Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93, 223-231. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x

Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organisation, Random House.

Shutt, L. & Shutt, A. (2019). Student and graduate views of the purpose of universities. WonkHE.com. https://wonkhe.com/blogs/student-and-graduate-views-of-the-purpose-of-universities/

Waldrop, M. M. (2015). Why are we teaching science wrong, and how to make it right. Nature, 523, 272-274. https://doi.org/10.1038/523272a

Watson, E. R., & Collins, C. R. (2023). Putting the system in systemic racism: A systems thinking approach to advancing equity. American Journal of Community Psychology, 71, 274–286. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12628

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press.

About the author

Sarah Wilson-Medhurst is an independent HE Consultant and Researcher and until recently CTL (Centre for Teaching and Learning) Associate, University of Oxford. She is a long-time champion of active or activity-led learning and proponent of using a systems thinking lens to achieve an inclusive, sustainable and sustainability-led curriculum in higher education.

sarah.wilsonmedhurst@gmail.com