Introducing systems change in the schools: the case of school luncheons and vending machines

A major public health crisis facing America’s society is the increase in child and youth obesity, which has seen a fourfold increase in the last four decades. Major concerns include what children eat for school lunch and what other foods are available in schools. This paper illustrates efforts towards systems change in the luncheon program and food vending machines in the Chicago Public Schools. We discuss the different factors that lead to such changes using the framework of the social ecological model and the soft systems methodology, and we analyze how the resulting innovation was implemented and evaluated. First, we present a theoretical perspective to explain factors that influence children’s eating patterns from a systems approach. Second, we discuss the antecedent factors that lead to systems change. Finally, we examine challenges to systems change, such as resistance to change, different stakeholder priorities, lack of resources, institutional bureaucracy, and unrealistic funder expectations.     

Lessons learned in systems change initiatives: benchmarks and indicators

Measuring progress toward systems change, sustainable efforts that address root causes of an issue by changing policies and practices, is a difficult task for communities, evaluators, and foundations. Tracking and documenting changes in resources, power, policy, sustainable funding, structured relationships and roles, and underlying values require multi-level analyses. Systems change analysts must consider at least four “strata” at once: (1) events and trends, (2) patterns of interaction, (3) context and cultural or social models, and (4) the systems themselves. In this paper we provide a brief overview of systems change; a discussion of collaboratives as one “engine” of social change; a discussion of benchmarks and indicators of collaboratives focused on systems change; and suggestions for further research. The analysis draws upon several analytic frameworks described in the literature. We illustrate these concepts with examples from six systems change initiatives funded by The California Endowment. The need for further research is outlined.     

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as Cultural Icons of U.S. Foreign Policy

The conventional account of American diplomacy in the modern era is marked by a cultural tension between realist and idealist themes symbolized by the statecraft of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. However, a revisionist account has emerged to challenge and even reverse the conventional account of Roosevelt and Wilson. This poses an intriguing empirical puzzle that is essentially psychological, as it pertains to the belief systems of these two presidents. In order to investigate this puzzle and its implications for U.S. strategic culture, we employ an automated content analysis of the public statements by the two leaders regarding their operational code beliefs about the nature of the political universe and the best approach to effective political action. The results reveal similarities and differences in their belief systems and illustrate how psychological models can provide insights into the psychocultural origins of U.S. diplomacy that remain relevant to the present day.     

Systems change reborn: rethinking our theories, methods, and efforts in human services reform and community-based change

This article introduces the reader to this special issue on Systems Change and highlights six lessons learned about theory, methods, and interventions for systems change that emerged across the included articles. The value of a systems approach to systems change is examined, including the need for frameworks, methods, and change activities that attend to the characteristics of systems.     

Using system differences to orchestrate change: a systems-guides intervention model

Successful community-based interventions require that change agents give attention to the complexities of interwoven systems, described in the literature as complicated or complex, purposeful or purposive. The author further notes the separate standards, norms, principles and/or goals (here-named systems-guides) of systems. This paper describes the author's experience as a consultant to a multi-system collaboration where observed tensions among participants resulted in the author's implementation of a three-step systems-guides model, which can increase change agents' effectiveness with systems. The steps comprise: detection (of systems, systems-guides, and discrepancies between them; here through observation); documentation (of discrepancies; here through small group discussions); dissemination (to systems participants; here to the collaboration). Two small but fundamental systems changes emerged from systems participants, not from the change agent/author who facilitated systems members' recognition of discrepancies. A major limitation in the implementation of this systems-guides model centers on the critical necessity of the close relationship change agents must have with the involved systems.     

Effects of positive youth development programs on school, family, and community systems

A review of efforts at social system change in 526 universal competence-promotion outcome studies indicated that 64% of the interventions attempted some type of microsystemic or mesosystemic change involving schools, families, or community-based organizations in an attempt to foster developmental competencies in children and adolescents. Only 24% of the reports provided quantitative data on the change that occurred in targeted systems. However, studies containing the necessary information produced several mean effect sizes that were statistically significant, and ranged from modest to large in magnitude. These data indicate that attempts to change social systems affecting children and adolescents can be successful. Future work should measure more thoroughly the extent to which the systemic changes that are targeted through intervention are achieved, and investigate how such changes contribute to the development and sustainability of the outcomes that might be demonstrated by participants of competence-promotion programs. The authors wish to thank David Wilson for supplying the macros used to calculate study level effect sizes and Mark Lipsey for supplying the SPSS macros used to weight effect sizes and calculate mean effects across studies. This study was supported in part by a grant from the William T. Grant Foundation (#2212) awarded to the first and last authors.     

What <Emphasis Type="Italic">is</Emphasis> wrong with intelligent design?

While a great deal of abuse has been directed at intelligent design theory (ID), its starting point is a fact about biological organisms that cries out for explanation, namely “specified complexity” (SC). Advocates of ID deploy three kind of argument from specified complexity to the existence of a designer: an eliminative argument, an inductive argument, and an inference to the best explanation. Only the first of these merits the abuse directed at it; the other two arguments are worthy of respect. If they fail, it is only because we have a better explanation of SC, namely Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.     

Career adaptability development in adolescence: Multiple predictors and effect on sense of power and life satisfaction

This longitudinal panel study investigated predictors of career adaptability development and its effect on development of sense of power and experience of life satisfaction among 330 Swiss eighth graders. A multivariate measure of career adaptability consisting of career choice readiness, planning, exploration, and confidence was applied. Based on Motivational Systems Theory four groups of predictors were assessed: positive emotional disposition, goal decidedness, capability beliefs and social context beliefs. Influence of gender, age, immigration background, parental educational level, and college-bound or vocational education plans were also assessed. Perceived social support and positive emotional disposition, non-immigration background, and continuing to vocational education were single significant predictors of more career adaptability development over the school year. Supporting the connection of career adaptability and positive youth development, increase in career adaptability over time predicted increase in sense of power and experience of life satisfaction.     

Systemic Wisdom,The ‘Selving’ of Nature,and Knowledge Transformation: Education for the ‘Greater Whole’

Considerations arising in the context of burgeoning concerns about the environment can provoke an exploration of issues that have significance both for environmental education in particular and education more generally. Notions of the ‘greater whole’ and ‘systemic wisdom’ that feature in some strands of environmental discourse are a case in point. It is argued that interpretations of these notions arising in currently influential scientific and systems thinking understandings of nature that attempt to overcome a corrosive separation of humankind and nature through a dilution or dismissal of the distinction between the human and non-human, self and other, require critical evaluation if they are not to bring their own dangers. Merleau-Pontian understandings of object constitution in a subjectively informed life-world and ideas of the ‘selving’ of natural things are drawn upon in developing a non-discursively grounded interpretation of systemic wisdom. The latter is taken to raise questions that have considerable transformative potential for conventional views of knowledge and its curriculum organisation.     

Community, Culture and Sustainability in Multilevel Dynamic Systems Intervention Science

This paper addresses intertwined issues in the conceptualization, implementation and evaluation of multilevel dynamic systems intervention science (MDSIS). Interventions are systematically planned, conducted and evaluated social science-based cultural products intercepting the lives of people and institutions in the context of multiple additional events and processes (which also may be referred to as interventions) that may speed, slow or reduce change towards a desired outcome. Multilevel interventions address change efforts at multiple social levels in the hope that effects at each level will forge synergistic links, facilitating movement toward desired change. This paper utilizes an ecological framework that identifies macro (policy and regulatory institutions), meso (organizations and agencies with resources, and power) and micro (individuals, families and friends living in communities) interacting directly and indirectly. An MDSIS approach hypothesizes that change toward a goal will occur faster and more effectively when synchronized and supported across levels in a social system. MDSIS approaches by definition involve “whole” communities and cannot be implemented without the establishments of working community partnerships This paper takes a dynamic systems approach to science as conducted in communities, and discusses four concepts that are central to MDSIS—science, community, culture, and sustainability. These concepts are important in community based participatory research and to the targeting, refinement, and adaptation of enduring interventions. Consistency in their meaning and use can promote forward movement in the field of MDSIS, and in community-based prevention science.