Compassionate Systems

Our purpose

We nurture the development of young people who can engage with complexity, embrace diversity, and develop compassionate, collaborative approaches to addressing real-world challenges and issues.

The Compassionate Systems Collective is a growing network of people, schools, and organisations committed to advancing systems change in education through an integrated focus on systems thinking, systems sensing, and social-emotional learning. We support collaboration, learning and development for schools and other organisations in the Australian context, and help to connect them to the wider innovation ecosystem for compassionate systems.

The work of the collective is supported by the Centre for Systems Awareness. The centre was founded by MIT researchers Peter Senge and Mette Miriam Boell. The Centre for Systems Awareness exists to advance systems change in education through exploring the profound interconnectedness of educational innovation in areas such as learner-centred pedagogy, social-emotional learning, mindfulness, project-based learning, and systems and design thinking.

The Mandala for Systems Change

The Mandala for Systems Change provides a holistic model that guides the growth and development of our network. Our collaboration is focused on the four interdependent domains of practice, research, capacity building and community building. We see these interconnected domains as providing the essential structure from which our individual and collective work, and wider systemic change can grow. Each domain embodies a distinctive focus for inquiry in relation to our work with compassionate systems in education:

  • What are we seeking to accomplish? (Practice)

  • What are we seeking to learn, especially that can benefit others beyond ourselves? (Research)

  • How do we need to learn and grow, individually and collectively, to be successful? (Capacity building)

  • Who is the “we”and what is the quality of the relational space we create? (Community building)

The Compassionate Systems Framework

The Compassionate Systems Framework is organized around three essential components:

1. Systems thinking: developing the capability for students to use thinking tools and practices to examine how natural and man-made systems work.

2. Systems sensing: developing the capability of students to engage with diverse perspectives of real-world contexts, and work collaboratively to address complex problems and challenges.

3. Compassionate systems stance: developing the capability of students to adopt a compassionate and collaborative approach for engaging with themselves, others, and the social and natural environments in which they live.

Who we are

The Compassionate Systems Collective (CSC) is a network that supports collaboration, learning and development for schools and other institutions with a shared interest in Compassionate Systems.

It was founded by a group of leaders from Woodleigh School, Carey Baptist Grammar School, Lutheran Education - SA, NT and WA, and the Centre for Systems Awareness at the beginning of 2022. The network is coordinated by a team of volunteers drawn from the CSC membership. Support and guidance for the development of the network is provided by an advisory committee.

Organising Committee

Dr Richard Owens, Convenor

Mignon Weckert, Network Coordinator

Jodie Kirchner, Network Coordinator

Advisory Committee

Dr Richard Owens, Director, Woodleigh Institute

Jane Drake, Managing Director, Centre for System Awareness

David Baker, Principal, Woodleigh School

Jonathan Walter, Principal, Carey Grammar Baptist School

Mignon Weckert, Educational Leadership Director, LESNW