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Our Approach · Foundations

Academic Foundations

The learning experience is child-friendly. The intellectual foundation is rigorous.

Is this too complex for children?

Not a university subject scaled down

The claim that systems thinking is “too complex for children” is only true if we bring university models to them unchanged. That is not what Cybee does. We take the core principles and redesign them into activities that fit each age.

What Cybee does

Takes the essential ideas and expresses them as simple questions, carried through stories, games, pictures and real situations from family, school, environment and community.

What Cybee does not do

  • Systems of equations
  • Complex causal loop diagrams
  • Stock-and-flow modelling
  • Critical Systems Heuristics
  • Soft Systems Methodology
  • Deep philosophical debates

Instead, children explore questions like:

?What consequences could this change create?
?Who is affected by this decision?
?Where is the real problem?
?What happens if everyone acts this way?
?Which things here are connected to one another?
?Could today’s solution create tomorrow’s problem?
?Whose perspective is being left out?
Cybee is not simplifying a university subject. It is building a new kind of education, grounded in the principles of systems thinking and designed for children from the start.
The rigour underneath

Six methodologies guide the design

Children never begin by memorising these academic names. Each one shapes the stories, questions, maps, games and projects they actually experience.

SSM

Soft Systems Methodology

Contribution

Messy situationsMultiple perspectivesDifferent purposesCulturally feasible improvement

Child translation

Draw the situation. Ask how different people understand it.
SD

System Dynamics

Contribution

Behaviour over timeFeedback loopsDelaysUnintended consequencesLeverage

Child translation

What keeps making this problem grow, return or slow down?
CSH

Critical Systems Heuristics

Contribution

BoundariesPowerExpertiseLegitimacyFairness

Child translation

Who benefits? Who decides? Whose knowledge counts? Who is missing?
TOC

Theory of Constraints

Contribution

ConstraintsCause-and-effect logicUnderlying conflictObstacles to implementation

Child translation

What is the bottleneck? Are we solving the cause or only the symptom?
VSM

Viable System Model

Contribution

Operational autonomyCoordinationMonitoringAdaptationIdentity

Child translation

Who does the work, coordinates, checks, looks ahead and protects the shared purpose?
CSP

Critical Systems Practice

Contribution

Methodological pluralismCritical awarenessInterventionReflectionAdaptation

Child translation

Use the right thinking tools, try carefully, learn and adjust.

Interested in the research?

We are building the evidence, not assuming the outcome.

Research & evidenceExplore Systems-8