Systems That Frame Early Learning Services

246 | Quality Early Learning

accountability, workforce capacity, data collection and use, family and community engagement, and links with other services. • All seven elements of infrastructure combine with early learning services to form a system. All elements need to work in harmony with the service to deliver quality early learning. • Understanding how diverse system elements interact with one another to support quality early learning is a prerequisite for its advancement and scalability.

Systems Thinking in General

Challenges that face the vast array of services that support young children are neither new nor unique to this field. Transcending disciplines, institutions, and populations, systemic challenges have existed for decades, evoking a rich and varied theoretical base.2 In general, systems theory is framed by five themes: there is a functional link between the elements or parts of a system and the whole; system elements and the whole exist in relationship to one another; system elements change over time and are influenced by one another, new knowledge, and altered contexts; such change is often unpredictable and nonlinear; and change exists within a web of causality so that a change in one element affects other elements and the entire system.

Germane to all systems work, and especially to ECEC programs and early learning services, Ackoff (2010) suggests that systems and the “messes” they evoke can be dealt with through absolution (ignoring the mess and hoping the current situation self-corrects), resolution (creating a good-enough response), solution (creating a response that generates the best possible outcome for the current system), or dissolution (redesigning the system to eliminate the mess). This chapter contends that early childhood programs and early learning services may be characterized by the first two courses of action: absolution and resolution. With regard to absolution, many early learning advocates either consciously (because it is so challenging) or unconsciously (because of a lack of understanding) ignore the systems mess. Others who want to see immediate gains are resolved to move forward with programmatic advances because a “good-enough” solution may be timely and achievable. Ackoff (2010) and other systems thinkers, including this chapter’s authors, regard absolution and resolution as insufficient generally.

Where young children are concerned, given the proven benefits of quality early learning programs, neglecting systems thinking is morally wrong, strategically unwise, and inimical to our collective social well-being.