"As far as I am aware, Nandish Patel is the first to successfully assert the value that a profession-based, personal development framework will add to the world of systems analysis and the knock-on effects that such frameworks will have for organisational progression. This book is for anyone continually seeking to improve upon performance both personally and professionally."
Jacqui McNish, Visiting Fellow, e-Government and Information Management, London South Bank University
As systems analysis and design is becoming increasingly concerned with the organization as a whole, systems analysts need to concern themselves with organization design as well as system design.
This book takes a unique approach to systems analysis and design by using an approach that provides learners with a critical personal framework This enables the reader to develop a personal method for critically considering and developing personal knowledge and practice of systems analysis and design by contrasting the real world with the systems world, thus differentiating it from existing systems analysis books. This website contains an article which expands on this idea and will be of assistance to lecturers who wish to adopt this approach.
For lecturers (Introduction to main article)
The article which follows is a pedagogical justification for the personal framework approach adopted in Critical Systems Analysis and Design. The Holistic Approach to Learning and Teaching Interaction is derived from the author’s concern to develop criticality in learners and practitioners. It formally states experiences of teaching critical thinking to undergraduates and postgraduates over twelve years in higher education. Its aim is to develop critical thinkers based on the ostensible premise that education is a significant element in developing the self.
Lectures will be able to glean from the article how to enable students to
- Use criticality to evaluate knowledge.
- Explain how the self and knowledge elements contribute to criticality
- Examine the relationship between knowledge and practice.
- Account for how they accept others’ knowledge claims.
- Think of their particular style of learning.
Training is the learning of specific skills to perform specific tasks. It makes the individual obedient to certain ways of behaving. It can be argued that training stops thinking and it certainly does not develop critical thinking. Providing an educational perspective in systems analysis and design is difficult because the subject is composed of practical techniques and tools that lend themselves to a training perspective. In programmes I have seen this mostly marginalises analytical, evaluative and critical cognitive skills, and does not lead to critical thinking.
Universities should aim to educate rather than simply train. Education is more difficult to define. The difficulty is appreciable when considering the educational psychologist Skinner’s definition: "Education is what survives after what has been learnt has been forgotten." (Skinner 1964) What does survive after an education? Graduates ‘feel’ educated but are not expected to remember all the knowledge that they have learnt. Rather than require certain ways of behaving, education encourages individuals to think independently. The capacity to think independently with confidence is an outcome of an education.
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