Systems Thinkers in Action

Blane Després has assembled a forceful, instructive and imaginative collection. It is given to the skilled and productive identification of systematic elements at work within what otherwise seems to be the blooming buzz of factors that affect school reform. Within this approach lies much hope for realizing and sustaining better schools. -- John Willinsky, pacific press professor of Literacy and Technology, The University of British Columbia and author, Learning to Divide the World
At the outset of my career in university education we were but a few pockets of systemic thinkers scattered thinly across the globe. A transformation in paradigm in the latter 1900s saw systemic thinking enter the mindsets of both mainstream academia and everyday working life. That this revolution has brought systemic thinking back on itself to critically evaluate the educational fabric from which it was spawned is the ultimate exemplar of systemic thinking. This volume explores an exciting variety of systemic investigations into the educational process and is to be recommended as both insightful into systemic thinking and instructive about applied systemic thinking within education. -- Robert L. Flood, author, Rethinking The Fifth Discipline
This family of theories-systems, chaos, and complexity-has so much to contribute to our thinking about and practice of education. At base, they embrace and empower the individual human spirit. Systems Thinking in Action will help place these ideas where they deserve to be in our teaching and scholarship-at dead center. -- Marc Cutright, The University of North Texas and editor, Chaos Theory and Higher Education: Leadership, Practice, and Policy