As we continue building toward your final wicked problem presentation, this week’s journal invites you to deepen your systems analysis by examining your problem through multiple perspectives, systems relationships, ethical complexity, and inclusionary lenses.
This week’s readings and activities emphasized that wicked problems are experienced differently depending on the perspectives, assumptions, emotions, values, lived experiences, and social realities stakeholders bring into the system. We also explored how systems often produce unintended consequences, ethical tensions, and inequitable outcomes even when systems are designed with positive intentions.
For this week’s journal, continue developing your chosen wicked problem by integrating this week’s concepts into your reflection and consider the following prompts:
Briefly revisit your selected wicked problem and explain how your understanding of the issue is evolving as you continue working through the course. Apply at least three of De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to your wicked problem. How does intentionally examining the issue through different lenses deepen or complicate your understanding of the system? Using Meadows’ systems thinking concepts, discuss at least two systems dynamics, feedback loops, patterns, or unintended consequences connected to your wicked problem. Reflect on the ethical, inclusionary, or social justice dimensions of the issue. Whose voices, experiences, or needs appear prioritized within the system? Whose perspectives may be marginalized, excluded, or underrepresented? Consider whether systems designed to help people may also unintentionally create barriers, inequities, or harm within your selected wicked problem. Finally, reflect on how this week’s concepts influence the way you are approaching your final wicked problem presentation and ongoing analysis.
The purpose of this journal is not to solve the wicked problem, but to continue deepening your systems awareness, stakeholder analysis, ethical reflection, and engagement with complexity as part of your ongoing learning journey.
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