Welcome to the Systems Thinking Voices In Canada Directory

This is where you can view the Personal Biographies of everyone who has chosen to register in the STVIC directory and become a member of the STVIC community. Because registration is a personal choice, the STVIC community represents an unknown portion of the full community of people using systems thinking skills in Canadian context activities. Each person and activity is contributing to Canadian context systems thinking literacy. Click below for an explanation of the Canadian context systems thinking community and the STVIC community within it.

STVIC Community Explained

Full Directory Access

Click below to view every registrant in the STVIC directory. Names are ordered alphabetically by the last name. By selecting a name, you can view the registrant’s Personal Bio.

View All Registrants

Taxonomies

To highlight some interesting characteristics of the STVIC community, we created searchable taxonomies where you can view registrants who are in your category of interest. Choose a taxonomy below, select a category inside it and discover who is there!

Canadian Provinces and Territories

Canada is the world’s second largest country with over one quarter of its land existing north of the treeline. It has the longest coastline in the world bordering three oceans: the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Arctic. Canada’s geographic and sociocultural diversity is also apparent in the STVIC community. By selecting a province or territory, you can meet registrants who are learning systems thinking skills in local educational programs, practicing them in local professional work or simply living locally and building systems thinking skills through self-directed study, whether past or present. You may be surprised to see the diversity of systems thinkers within each Canadian region!

Alberta British Columbia Manitoba New Brunswick Newfoundland and Labrador Nova Scotia Ontario Prince Edward Island Quebec Saskatchewan Northwest Territories Nunavut Yukon

Decade Registrant Began
Building ST Skills

The study of System Sciences is widely considered to have been announced as a formal discipline in 1937 when Ludwig von Bertalanffy presented General Systems Theory (GST). Important preceding foundations to GST were laid out by Alexander Bogdanov who had presented The Theory of Tectology by 1917. The name Systems Thinking (ST) was later adopted to denote the study of practical applications of GST that was developing in parallel to GST since 1937. Today some groups use ST to describe both practical and theoretical studies. To gain a sense of the origins of ST in Canadian context to the present day it is helpful to know the decade post 1937 in which each registrant began learning formal systems thinking skills. To capture the full “origin story” explore the Full In Tribute Archive that pays hommage to the Canadian context systems thinkers passed away, whose shoulders we stand on today.

1937–1947 1947–1957 1957–1967 1967–1977 1977–1987 1987–1997 1997–2007 2007–2017 2017–2027

Practice Community

This refers to the community in which the STVIC registrant is currently building and practicing systems thinking (ST) skills. It includes:

Several students communities such as Secondary School, College/University Undergraduate, Polytechnic Institute, Graduate Studies and ST Learning Organization.

A single community of Graduated Professionals for registrants with professional qualifications in any field who have been taught ST skills through organized educational opportunities such as the student communities mentioned above, ST-focused continuing professional education, and community-based organizations offering ST education. This community includes all professionally trained educators who are teaching systems thinking skills in any of the student communities mentioned above. The registrant who learns systems thinking skills through organized education alongside professional activities will appear in the directory as a graduated professional and a student community.

The Lifelong Learner identifies people building systems thinking skills through self-directed individual learning. This can include students, graduated professionals, or citizens building their skills from systems thinking-focused personal learning sources such as books, ebooks, audios and videos.

The In Tribute community honours the Canadian context systems thinking ecosystem of people now passed on who lived through the period during which system sciences were crystallizing after its announcement as a discipline in 1937. This ecosystem includes the first wave of pioneers who were developing the principles of formal general systems theory and were exploring its applications. It also includes people using systems thinking concepts in their work who didn’t name them as such for a number of possible reasons. STVIC wishes to remember both the earliest systems thinkers of the formal discipline and others within the systems thinking ecosystem who were expressing similar patterns of thinking in multiple cultures while not naming the concepts in the language and vocabulary of the formal discipline.

Full In Tribute Archive

Secondary School College/University Undergraduate Polytechnic Institute Graduate Studies Graduated Professional ST Learning Organization Lifelong learner

Educational Subjects And Fields of Application

Because systems thinking skills is inherently cross disciplinary it is impossible to develop a complete list of the educational subjects and fields of application in which it is taught or practiced. The registrant has made up to three selections from the list below that are the most primary domains in which they are using systems thinking skills.

Languages and Methods

STVIC recognizes a growing view in the systems thinking community that the ST discipline can be described as a series of methods expressed through an expanding set of languages which can be hand drawn, computer generated and often both. This taxonomy shows a blended list of these languages and methods that are the tools each registrant uses for their systems thinking activities. A registrant can choose up to five categories in this taxonomy due to the multiple systems thinking tools they commonly use.