What Is This Thing Called CRITICAL Systems Thinking

This paper is about Critical Systems Thinking (CST), a research perspective which is said to embrace three fundamental commitments. These are commitments to: critical awareness—examining and re-examining taken-for-granted assumptions, along with the conditions which give rise to them; emancipation—ensuring that research is focused upon ‘improvement’, defined temporarily and locally, taking issues of power (which may affect the definition) into account; and methodological pluralism—using a variety of research methods in a theoretically coherent manner, becoming aware of their strengths and weaknesses, to address a corresponding variety of issues.

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