Application of soft systems methodology to the real world process of teaching and learning

Much educational practice taught at teaching colleges regarding the process of teaching and learning is derived from a theoretical base. Less is based on lessons learned from the observation of the actual process of teaching and learning. Undergraduate teachers and mature practitioners are left with unstructured and unsystematic personal reflections of the process of teaching and learning for meeting any deficiencies they may have perceived. Soft systems methodology is an approach that can fill this lacuna. It provides a structured and systematic as well as systemic, approach for analysing actual practices in organized human activities, or human activity systems, such as the institution of education. The methodology is of particular benefit for analysing the process of teaching and learning because it does not require starting the process as an identified and precisely defined problem requiring a commensurate solution, yet it is still capable of generating recommendations for improving the process. The methodology is applied to this process to discover whether it can reveal hitherto unrecognized teaching and learning activities which can be used to improve the process in question.