Introduction. Systems Literacy is a coordinated ongoing action to create a greater awareness and understanding about “Systems” in our lives, in the world, nature, society, science and art, schools and universities and engineering and beyond and with that awareness and understanding an ability to make informed decisions and communicate using systems approaches . This Systems Literacy initiative builds on previous “literacy” work facilitated and/or contributed to by the College of Exploration and by many other Literacy projects combined with the many “systems” education programs around the world. These range across many disciplines and many related topics, including cybernetics, complexity, complex adaptive systems, systems thinking, network literacy and network thinking, pattern literacy, developments in neurosciences and many others. Please send in suggestions
Foundation in Nature. the College of Exploration has specifically worked to varying degrees on Geography, Ocean, Earth Science, Atmospheric Science, and Energy literacy actions, guides, websites and projects since 1998. The foundation of this work and initial condition are these natural systems of water, earth, air, and energy and biological life, including us! These geoscience and energy literacy publications that we have been involved in have been created since 2002. See the Oceans for Life guide created by the National Geographic, which help set the stage for Ocean Literacy at http://www.oceanliteracy.net Earth Science Literacy at http://www.earthscienceliteracy.org Atmospheric Science Literacy at https://scied.ucar.edu/atmospheric-science-literacy-framework and Energy at https://energy.gov/eere/education/energy-literacy-essential-principles-and-fundamental-concepts-energy-education
Other Literacy actions. The College of Exploration efforts in the above efforts and the associated guides are possible models for systems literacy. A collection of worldwide literacy efforts that we can consider is collected here http://www.coexploration.org/literacy
In 1997 a guide to Biological Literacy was published. Climate Literacy will also be considered. https://www.climate.gov/teaching/essential-principles-climate-literacy/essential-principles-climate-literacy Another important literacy consideration is Forest Literacy from Oregon Forest Research Institute.
Of direct relevance is the work that created a guide to Network Literacy
United States Education for Science and Engineering. The USA Next Generation Science and Engineering Standards Cross Cutting Concepts will inform this work. Also an important consideration is the recent work of the USA National Academies on Science Literacy. Download their report as a PDF.
This Systems Literacy project is greatly assisted, supported and encouraged by the US based International Council on Systems Engineering http://www.incose.org and the work of theINCOSE Systems Science Working Group.
Vision. The vision is to create a systems literate world. The aim is to create a broader awareness and understanding of the science (and art) of systems. To achieve that we are building a collaborative learning system for systems literacy that coherently and systemically includes as many individuals, groups, societies, associations and other organizations from around the world who are concerned with systems research, education, theory, methods and applications to map, understand and describe big ideas, principles and concepts of systems.
Project at the College of Exploration. A Systems Literacy project at the College of Exploration began in 2008 when we presented a poster on Geosciences Literacy at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in December 2008. The natural development of this idea was to suggest a Systems Literacy initiative as described on this College of Exploration Systems Literacy page created in 2008.
Renewed effort began in 2015. Then in 2015 we attended the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) annual conference in Berlin, Germany. There we spoke informally about our work on ocean and earth science literacy in the USA over the previous fifteen years. We suggested that perhaps ISSS might consider a similar effort for systems. This idea gained attention quickly, so much so that we were encouraged to pursue Systems Literacy in ISSS and also with the International Council of Systems Engineers (INCOSE) , the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) and other Systems organizations, federations, society and groups.
In 2016 the whole IFSR “conversation”, a week long program in LInz, Austria organized by the IFSR had the overarching them of Systems Literacy and resulted in a publication on Systems Literacy The conversation also produced a paper Systems Research: A Foundation for Systems_Literacy.
Exploratory Workshops since 2015. Many workshops on Systems Literacy have been conducted at IFSR, ISSS and INCOSE meetings. One member of INCOSE, Bill Schindel, has stated that system phenomena are the starting point for traditional disciplines in the natural sciences and engineering. See his presentation “Got Phenomena” at the Sirocco Summit in 2016 and his related paper presented at the 26th Annual INCOSE International Symposium.
Other References to Systems Literacy. Subsequent to initiating this cooperative effort with ISSS, INCOSE and IFSR and the worldwide systems community at large in 2015 we have found the term “systems literacy” has been used in different ways. All these uses of the term “systems literacy” were unknown to us in 2015 when we made the impromptu suggestion at the ISSS Conference in Berlin to create a systems literacy project.
In 1992 Fred Cowell published in the ISSS yearbook a paper called “Systems Literacy and the Literate Design of Education Systems”.
The term systems literacy is used on a website by Public Broadcasting Service to present a another view of systems. Linda Booth Sweeney wrote “Learning to Connect the Dots: Developing Children’s Systems Literacy” in October 2012.
Another view is presented by Hugh Dubberly proposing a Systems Literacy Manifesto, All these uses of the term “systems literacy” were unknown to us in 2015 when we made the impromptu suggestion at the ISSS Conference in Berlin to create a systems literacy project.
In November 2019 I was made aware of this work by Plate and Monroe in a paper published in The 2014 Creative Learning Exchange called A Structure for Assessing Systems Thinking. The suggest four levels of Systems Literacy assessed across interestingly seven skills. http://static.clexchange.org/ftp/newsletter/CLEx23.1.pdf
In July 2018 we found a set of presentations made in 2015 by Robert Gilman of the Context Institute on Systems Literacy https://www.context.org/foundation-stones/tools/systems-presentation/
In 2017 Howard Silverman wrote a chapter for book The Community Resilience Reader – Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval. The chapter is called “Systems Literacy: A Toolkit for Purposeful Change”. You can read the book here https://reader.resilience.org/
Language
As can be seen from the term “systems literacy” is not without it challenges, even for the English language. We acknowledge that these two words already have different meanings, The term literacy is also not easily translated into many languages.