Systems thinking is the ability to describe and/ or visualise a part of a complex reality, express that part of reality as a model, understand the model as a system, use the model to explain the behaviour of the system, anticipate the behaviour of the system, and evaluate its impacts on sustainable development, identify potential points of, and types of interventions, generate options to act, assess their impacts in the frame of sustainable development, and decide whether further actions are necessary or not.

The ten steps are based on the definition already introduced in the section “What is ‘Systems Thinking’ Competence?”. Each of these steps is described as a chapter in the following sections.

You may climb one step easily, but find another a little challenging. You might start to climb but not manage to complete a step, and have to make another attempt.

In each Step, certain activities and tasks are suggested that use different Learning Methods. You can find all the learning methods in alphabetical order in the Appendix. Some steps also refer to Worksheets or Information Sheets. You can also find these in the Appendix. We suggest these learning methods and materials as handrails to help the climbers on their journey. In a group of climbers, one may lend a helping hand to another. So, it is with the learning process, with participants contributing different ideas and abilities to the group learning process.

At the end of each step, a few ‘further leading questions’ are suggested, which help in guiding the participants’ thinking to the next step.

The Sustainable Development competences likely to be enhanced in each step are indicated using a radar chart such as the one presented below.

We have included such a graphic for each of the Ten Steps. They show the type of SD competences that might be developed in the individual steps. Do note that these are only indicative of a low, medium, or strong possibility of competence enhancement, and not definitive representations.
We just want to provide a hint to the facilitator that the indicated competences may be enhanced. Note that the opportunity and realization of competence strengthening depends on each learning situation, the facilitator, and the learners. Therefore, we present these graphics in only the theory segment of the Ten Steps and not in the examples.

We encourage you as a facilitator and educator to think about the SD competence framework when preparing learning approaches and methods. The radar graphic is a tool to help you in your reflection on how the activities and learning methods you select might help in developing different SD competences. At the end of each step, you may use the graphic as a tool to recapitulate with learners what was done in the step and whether they felt such competences were gained.

This manual presents two examples of how to apply the Ten Steps of Systems Thinking. Two items that may be familiar to young people around the world – jeans and chips – are the main characters in these examples.

How may one identify a suitable topic for the development of systems thinking competence? Here are some pointers to keep in mind:

When starting, it may be appropriate to choose familiar topics and local scales – these may not be less complex, but easier to understand.

Here are examples of topics that you may find suitable to explore:

• items like jeans, chips or other food items, car, wooden house
• activities and processes like traffic and waste management
• natural phenomenon in which humans have intervened, like climate (change), soil formation and dynamics, water cycle.

You can choose a starting point for your Ten Step exploration: start with an everyday item or situation in your city or village, or analyse a part of nature that you and your learners are concerned about or interested in.

Topics most suited for exploring sustainability issues with a systems approach would touch social, political, economic and environmental dimensions, and could have multiple scales – individual, family, community, region, state/ nation, and the whole world.

Figure 1 is intended to help you choose or appropriately frame a topic for Systems learning. The chart presents different dimensions (social affairs, economy etc) and scales (represented in different colours) of development, that may be considered when choosing and analysing topics. The red line in the graphic indicates that some topics extend beyond state and country limits.

To check whether a topic would be suitable for Systems learning or not, you could draw a chart (or use the table template below) and add key words in each segment, relating to the theme (social, economy, politics, environment) and the scale (individual, community, etc). The more populated the template is, the better. Realizing the complexity of issues is a valuable insight.

You may also refer to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and their targets to find inspiration for systems thinking topics. It is very valuable to have young minds grapple with the challenges that the SDGs present.