Everyone was consulted
The workshop was representative because every stakeholder group received an invitation.
The case
A fictional transport consultation invites operators, passengers, and a disability group. The disability group declines the evening workshop. The savings target and available options are fixed before anyone arrives. Participants may comment on presentation but cannot challenge the criteria.
Try it before reading on
Distinguish invitation, attendance, evidence, and decision authority. Identify one change that would allow an affected group to challenge the terms of the inquiry.
Use paper or your own notes. Keep the first answer as well as any revision.
Compare your reasoning
An invitation records an invitation. It does not establish accessible participation, representation, or influence. Ask why the group declined without treating absence as consent. Offer a format they can use and explain what their evidence can change. Keep the sponsor's retained authority explicit. A seat at the table does not resolve an inability to question the table's agenda.
When could the claim be defensible?
Some constraints may be legitimate and fixed. Participation can still be worthwhile if those constraints and their basis are stated, and participants can genuinely affect the remaining decisions. Do not promise shared authority that has not been granted.
Change the conditions
The group submits evidence through its own representative but cannot attend. What would count as a substantive response?
Compare the changed case
Record how the evidence changes options, criteria, or the decision, or explain specifically why it does not. Attendance and a thank-you letter are not adequate proxies for that response.
Follow the specific connection
Critical Systems Heuristics: inspect all twelve boundary categories
This exercise checks the completeness and consistency of boundary reasoning. It does not supply a morally unique answer or pretend that the practitioner represents every affected person.
Participative inquiry: test who your evidence leaves out
A basic inquiry-design rehearsal. An invented engagement plan is not evidence of actual facilitation, safe participation or sustained relationships.
Source routes and reading limits
The methodological route below uses the existing practice pack's checked resource descriptions. This release does not claim fresh reading of the external works.
Werner Ulrich: a mini-primer of critical systems heuristics
Use the twelve categories to challenge your is/ought table and your treatment of affected people. Follow the linked primer for depth.
Existing check: Author's HTML guide and linked introduction inspected. It supplies boundary critique, not a unique correct policy answer.
OU repository: evaluation using critical systems heuristics
Study the operational use of CSH in evaluation and compare its boundary judgements with your own. No automated marking.
Existing check: Repository abstract and download listing inspected; the accepted manuscript is linked there.
UK Government: introductory systems thinking toolkit
Select the named tool, try the associated template and compare with the example. Use the pack's explicit checks where the toolkit provides no answer key.
Existing check: HTML toolkit inspected, including mapping, stock-flow, theory of change and evaluation sections. Its examples are not automatic validation of a learner's model.
Wenger-Trayner: systems convening, free book and resources
Use the cases to examine legitimacy, boundaries, agency and learning partnerships. The original case here provides the checkable rehearsal.
Existing check: Authors' page, free PDF route and paperback links inspected. It is a related social-learning resource, not identical to every method grouped in the bridge exercise.
SCiO competency framework resource guide (PDF)
Further reading for each framework row, including the separate references associated with transposing theory.
Existing check: Public sharing confirmed; approach and theory bibliography inspected. The presence of a reference does not establish that it contains self-check exercises.
Take one revision away
Write the claim you can now support, the assumption you changed, and the observation or decision still needed. Do not turn the worked comparison into a compulsory answer where the question admits alternatives.
Choose another claim · Print all task sheets · Download the cases and route record