Welcome to our exploratory journey of evaluation’s transformative role in engaging with the multiple crises of today’s world. We are Beverly Parsons and Katie Winters, two white women with a cumulative 60 + years of evaluation experience. We have plunged deeply and broadly into system theories, thinking, and practice for many years. Yet in the last three or four years we have experienced a liberation from some assumptions that we now recognize were grounded in an exclusionary set of system science theories and paradigms that were shaping our evaluation practice.
Lessons Learned
- Here’s a glimpse of what we are discovering.
- How are the two figure below different from one another?
- How are they the same?
- What types of connections do you envision among the elements in each figure?
- How are the connections similar and different between the two figures?
Answering these questions involves thinking in system patterns. We used to talk about “thinking in systems” but now we talk about “thinking in system patterns”. For example, you might see system patterns in the figures about power, dominance, extraction, equality, caring, symbiosis.
Here’s the definition we now use: A system is a perceived, integrated entity with a pattern of organization of interconnecting purpose, structure, and processes that is doing something.
Note four key features:
- Perceived: A system is not necessarily a physical entity. It is something that people perceive to exist, be it as a mental image and/or through senses such as taste, smell, touch, hearing, and emotion. How one perceives a system brings in their history, beliefs, values, culture, and personhood. Perception is experienced through one’s integrated body, mind, and spirit—sources that are often disconnected in Western thinking.
- Integrated entity: Although some use the phrase “collection of entities interacting together,” we are using the phrase “integrated entity” to emphasize the deeply connected unity of a system.
- Pattern of organization: A pattern of organization can be recognized through the use of three dimensions—purpose, structure, and processes. Thinking in terms of a pattern of organization presents a systemic unity. When we recognize how purpose, structure, and processes create a system’s pattern of organization (i.e., the underlying design), we gain a powerful frame for investigating how both the social and ecological systems in which we live are governed and managed and can be transformed. The three dimensions are not separate aspects of a system; they provide different angles from which to view the same wholistic entity.
- Doing something: A system is dynamic and energized. It may have a regular repeating pattern of change and motion or an irregular, evolving one.
We now find that our evaluation designs contribute to transformations toward well-being for humans and nature by seeing these deep system patterns in the social-ecological systems of our communities, nations, and planet as a whole.
Rad Resources
Recently we embarked on a multi-faceted journey through extensive systems theories and practices expressed in our recent article, Paradigm-Based Evaluation for Eco-Just Systems Transformation. It’s in the special issue of the Journal of MultiDisciplinary (open source) entitled Decolonizing Evaluation: Toward a Fifth Paradigm. Please use the many references in the article to delve into literature related to systems thinking, patterns, evaluation, and transformation.
Once in the special JMDE issue, don’t stop with our article. Explore the entire rich issue on decolonizing evaluation. Many thanks to Bagele Chilisa and Nicole Bowman, board members of the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc), for editing this special issue. Thanks to Michael Harnar (JMDE co-executive editor) for joining with the IEAc to produce it.
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