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Learning the art of any professional practice like engineering design or computer programming is a challenge for students and adds to the complexity of teaching such a technical discipline. Institutional regulations, along with industry expectations, increase the burden on the educator to develop a successful instructional environment. Critical systems thinking provides practitioners, in general, with a framework for understanding interrelation and complexities in a variety of problem situations. The art of systems thinking requires discourse on both the interdependencies, and multiple perspectives present in a problem situation. However, little guidance exists for educators in applying the concepts of critical systems thinking in their everyday practice of teaching a professional practice module at university level. This paper suggests a methodology based on action research and critical systems thinking concepts, to incorporate the art of systems thinking in the teaching of a professional practice module. The phases of action research are described from the critical systems perspective of Ulrich, in order to provide guidelines for an educator to embrace the complexity of professional practice education. Programming is used as a demonstration of the proposed methodology. The methodology incorporates systems thinking aspects such as the totality of conditioned realities, boundary critique, and acting as a witness sensitive to polemical argumentation on behalf of the affected. It demonstrates how Ulrich's approach involves - and respects - all stakeholders in a system and guides the individual educator to excel in teaching a professional practice module. By making a conscious effort to listen to the affected and to incorporate as many conditioned realities as possible, the educator should be able to improve student engagement, resulting in better skills. We provide a demonstration of the art of teaching a professional practice module methodology which enables the educator to develop the programming skills of students in a complex environment., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.)

This paper emerged as a result of Anishinabe and non-Indigenous scholars discussing the basic principles behind systems thinking. By asking the question "what is a system?", we uncovered that our very understanding of what makes a system was vastly different. As scholars working in cross-cultural and inter-cultural environments, these differing worldviews can create systemic challenges in unpacking complex problems. Trans-systemics offers language to unearth these assumptions by the recognition that the dominant, or "loudest", systems are not always the most appropriate or equitable. It goes beyond critical systems thinking to identify that tackling complex problems requires the recognition that there are multiple, overlapping systems and worldviews at play. We identified three key takeaways from Indigenous trans-systemics for socio-ecological systems thinkers: (1) trans-systemics is a call to humility, asking us to critically examine our patterns of thought and behavior; (2) by exploring humility, trans-systemics allows us to move past the autopoiesis of Eurocentric systems thinking to consider interdependence; and (3) to utilize Indigenous trans-systemics, we need to fundamentally reconsider how we understand the systems around us and bring in outside tools and concepts to enact meaningful systems change., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

Public health problems are often complex and 'wicked' in nature. Wicked problems have multi-factorial causation, are dynamic and often understood and acted upon differently by different actors. Multi-sectoral collaboration is increasingly emphasized for tackling wicked problems through developing a strategic multi-sectoral plan and then taking collective action. Critical systems thinking can support the development of a shared perspective of the problem, strengthen participation in collective action and foster reflective practices to continuously improve both problem understanding and action. In this paper, we present a critical collaboration model, drawing together two complementary theoretical frameworks, as well as insights from three case studies from New Zealand, to offer a systematic approach to adopting a critical systems perspective in public health collaboration. The model provides six questions to make explicit individuals' understandings or assumptions about how others perceive an issue, problem or evidence, and the process of identifying answers strengthens the dialogical and reflective aspects of the collaboration. We indicate some potential areas for the application of the model to integrate critical systems thinking in collaborative practices., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Background: Social prescribing (SP) allows health professionals to refer primary care patients toward health and wellbeing interventions and activities in the local community. Now widely implemented across the UK and adopted in other nations, questions arise concerning the modelling of present and future schemes, including challenges to full engagement encountered by stakeholders, which lie beyond the scope of traditional evaluations. Critical Systems Thinking (CST) allows for holistic analysis of fields where multiple stakeholders hold diverse interests and unequal power., Methods: We use CST to (a) critically examine a developing rural social prescribing scheme from multiple stakeholder perspectives and (b) present a relational model for local social prescribing schemes. Our fieldwork included 24 in-depth interviews, regular planning meetings with key stakeholders, and discussions with those involved with national and international SP landscaping. A modified grounded theory approach was used for the analysis, and to consider the core elements of social prescribing sustainability., Results: Our study confirms that local social prescribing schemes must operate with numerous stakeholder interests in mind, seeking to address real life social complexity and offer integrated solutions to multifaceted issues. Three main areas are discussed: holistic vision and boundary judgments; barriers and facilitators; relational issues and "emotional buy in". Problems for staff include selecting suitable clients, feedback and technological issues and funding and evaluation pressures. Barriers for clients include health, transport and expense issues, also lack of prior information and GP involvement. Emotional "buy-in" emerged as essential for all stakeholders, but hard to sustain. Based on our findings we propose a positive relational model comprising shared vision, confidence and commitment; motivation and encouragement, support and wellbeing focus, collaborative relationships, communication and feedback, access to information /resources, learning in and from action, with emotional "buy-in" at its heart., Conclusion: Those implementing social prescribing in different localities inevitably face hard choices about what and whom to include. Research on the sustainability of social prescribing remains limited, studies are required to ascertain which "holistic" models of social prescribing work best for which communities, who are the main beneficiaries of these approaches and how "buy-in" is best sustained.

This article uses an evocative autoethnographic approach to explore the experience of being an insider-researcher in a community-based participatory research setting. Taking a holistic perspective and using the form of narrative story-telling, I examine the dynamics between the typically marginalizing (but sometimes empowering) experience of being an autistic woman and the typically privileging (but sometimes oppressive) experience of being an engineering professional, during a time of career upheaval. Themes of motivations and mentors, adversity from social services and the academy, belonging, the slipperiness of intersectional positioning, feedback cycles of opportunity, dichotomies of competence and inadequacy, heightened stakes, and power and resistance are explored through the narrative. While primarily leaving the narrative to speak for itself per the qualitative approach taken, the article concludes with a discussion of how the personal experiences described relate both to the broader work of insider-researchers within disability-related fields, and to misconceptions about self-reflection and capacity for story-telling in individuals on the autism spectrum., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Critical systems thinking (CST) and community based participatory research (CBPR) are distinct approaches to inquiry which share a primary commitment to holism and human emancipation, as well as common grounding in critical theory and emancipatory and pragmatic philosophy. This paper explores their intersections and complements on a historical, philosophical, and theoretical level, and then proposes a hybrid approach achieved by applying CBPR's principles and considerations for operationalizing emancipatory practice to traditional systems thinking frameworks and practices. This hybrid approach is illustrated in practice with examples drawn from of the implementation of the learning organization model in an action research setting with the Autistic community. Our experience of being able to actively attend to, and continuously equalize, power relations within an organizational framework that otherwise has great potential for reinforcing power inequity suggests CBPR's principles and considerations for operationalizing emancipatory practice could be useful in CST settings, and CST's vocabulary, methods, and clarity around systems thinking concepts could be valuable to CBPR practioners.