> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://meta.niceshare.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Connection Circles
> Connection Circles place changing elements around a circle and draw direct causes. Learn the Carlisle origin, the rules, a Galway class, and the limits.
**Category**: Models
**Type**: Systems model
**Origin**: Julia Hendrix, Carlisle Public Schools; refined by Alan Ticotsky and Rob Quaden; in print in 2004
**Also known as**: Connection circle
**Quick Answer** — Connection Circles place a few changing elements around a circle and draw an arrow only for a direct cause. Julia Hendrix, a fifth-grade teacher in Carlisle, Massachusetts, conceived the drawing, and Alan Ticotsky and Rob Quaden refined it for the 2004 book *The Shape of Change*. A closed path is a question about a loop. A rating collected after class is a report about the class.
## What is Connection Circles?
Connection Circles are a drawing in which a small set of changing elements sits around a circle, and each arrow runs from a direct cause to its effect.
> Connection circles are thinking tools designed to help students understand complexity.
Rob Quaden and Alan Ticotsky, with Debra Lyneis, set that purpose down in *The Shape of Change* (Creative Learning Exchange, 2004). Janice Molloy later adapted the chapter for *The Systems Thinker*. The drawing is a way to hold several moving parts at once and to see whether a cause comes back around. [Systems thinking](/thinking/systems-thinking) is the wider habit. This page is one diagram inside that habit.
Picture a weeknight kitchen. Dishes in the sink, takeout meals, and the time left after work can all rise or fall. A list titled "why the kitchen is a mess" lines those words up. A connection circle asks a narrower question: which of these actually moves another, tonight, without a hidden step in between. The circle on the paper is the everyday cue. If you cannot say what rises, the word stays off the rim.
A [concept map](/methods/concept-map) puts a linking phrase on the line, and the two boxes plus the phrase should read as a sentence someone could call true or false. A connection circle uses an arrow and a sign. The arrow says which way the influence runs. The sign says whether the two elements move together or in opposite directions.
### Connection Circles in 3 Depths
* **Beginner**: If a word cannot rise or fall in the story you are reading, leave it off the circle. "The economy" is a cloud. "Orders this week" can go up.
* **Practitioner**: Keep five to ten nouns. Draw an arrow only when the cause moves the effect directly. Mark whether the two move the same way or opposite ways, then tell the story along one closed path.
* **Advanced**: A closed path is a candidate for a [feedback loop](/models/feedback-loops). Size, waiting time, and which loop is in charge belong on the next drawing: a [causal loop diagram](/models/causal-loop-diagram), and [stocks and flows](/models/stock-and-flow) when the decision needs amounts.
## Origin
Connection Circles come from a fifth-grade classroom in Carlisle, Massachusetts, and from two curriculum coordinators who turned that classroom trick into a lesson other teachers could run.
Julia Hendrix was a fifth-grade teacher in the Carlisle Public Schools. The 2004 lesson says she conceived the connection circle when she used the circle in the Connections Game, Lesson 9 of the same book, as a template for causal links in a story. The game had already asked students to complete a circle. Hendrix used that shape to ask what in the story was pushing what.
Alan Ticotsky and Rob Quaden then refined the method so students could probe causes and feedback in more than one kind of system. At the time of the book, Ticotsky was Carlisle's science curriculum coordinator and a former elementary teacher. Quaden was an eighth-grade algebra teacher and the district's math curriculum coordinator. Debra Lyneis, at the Creative Learning Exchange, helped teachers publish system-dynamics lessons for other teachers. Nathan Walker drew the illustrations.
*The Shape of Change* appeared from the Creative Learning Exchange in 2004. The connection-circle lesson credits the Gordon Stanley Brown Fund, and it says the work was supported by the Waters Foundation. A second book, *The Shape of Change: Stocks and Flows* (2007), carries the same lessons forward into stocks and flows. Molloy's adaptation for *The Systems Thinker* is the version a 2024 university case cites as Molloy (2018).
The lesson that teaches the rules uses a magazine article, "Eyes on the Fries," by Rene Ebersole, in *Current Science* on 1 March 2002. Students look for what is increasing, then place elements such as restaurants, profits, fries sold, fries eaten, fat consumption, and health concerns around the circle. That chapter shows the drawing on a published story. The chapter gives no test score for the class. The fry figures belong to the magazine piece, and the lesson uses them as a reading.
## Key Points
The drawing earns its keep when every word on the rim can change and every arrow is a direct cause. These four moves are the lesson's rules, in the order a group can finish in one sitting.
Choose elements that matter to the change in the story, that are nouns or noun phrases, and that increase or decrease as the story moves. Write them around the circle. Stop at five to ten. A name that never changes, or a whole sermon in one label, gives the arrow nothing to move. If you cannot sketch the element going up or down, it is not ready for the rim.
Find an element that causes another to increase or decrease, and draw the arrow from the cause to the effect. The lesson asks for a direct link. "More overtime, so more mistakes the same week" can be direct in a team you know. "More overtime, so the company fails" skips the steps you have not named. An arrow you cannot say aloud in one breath is a guess wearing a line.
A plus sign means the two elements move in the same direction: when the cause rises, the effect rises, and when the cause falls, the effect falls. A minus sign means they move in opposite directions. Fix the sign while the arrow is fresh. A reversed sign turns the later story upside down, and the circle will still look tidy.
A closed path, along the arrows and back to the start, is a feedback loop. Start with the elements that have the most connections, and trace each loop until the story comes home. Then stop adding arrows. The circle has done its job when the group can tell that story without the paper. The next drawing, if you still need it, is a causal loop diagram with the delays written in.
## Applications
Use a connection circle when several things are changing at once and a straight list of causes is starting to argue with itself.
From one article, list five to eight nouns that rise or fall. Draw only the arrows you can defend from the text. Tell the story around one closed path before you name a villain. If the path needs a fact the article never gives, that gap is the finding.
Put backlog, waiting time, overtime, defects, and new requests on the rim. Ask which arrow is direct this month. If overtime raises defects, and defects raise new requests, a hiring plan still has to say which of those arrows it will change. The circle makes that sentence visible.
For a rushed morning, try screens after dinner, hours asleep, and minutes late to the door. Draw an arrow only for what moves the same night. A word such as "stress" waits until you can say what rises. The unused gadget in the drawer is often a fix aimed at an element that was never on the rim.
Around a clinic's delay, place booked visits, waiting time, missed visits, and rebooking. Count which element has the most arrows before anyone drafts a penalty for missed visits. A penalty is a new arrow. Draw the circle that already exists, then decide whether the new arrow helps the loop you can see.
## Case Study
In 2024, five researchers at the University of Galway published a case report on this exercise in a master's classroom.
Dzmitry Brychkov, Peter Cornelius McKeown, Christine Domegan, Charles Spillane, and Galina Brychkova report the class in the *International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education*, volume 25, issue 9, pages 437–454. The paper was received on 29 October 2023 and published on 6 November 2024. They used the exercise, citing Molloy (2018), inside the OneHealth module of two one-year programmes: MSc AgriFood Sustainability and Technology, and MSc Sustainable Environments.
The two programmes had 29 students. The authors analysed 15 of them. They chose that count so a 95 percent confidence interval for the exercise's rated efficiency would stay within a margin of 0.5 units. After the exercise, an anonymous survey used a scale whose midpoint the authors mark as 3. Pooled across the teams, students rated the exercise's importance at 4.0 ± 0.47 and its usefulness at 4.16 ± 0.48. A clearer view of the problem scored 3.83 ± 0.41. A better grasp of causes scored 3.83 ± 0.47, and a better grasp of consequences scored 4.0 ± 0.44. A shared picture of the problem scored 3.81 ± 0.47. A better grasp of how the factors relate scored 4.19 ± 0.48. Communication about the problem was 3.66 ± 0.42. Courage to hold an unconventional opinion was 3.61 ± 0.44. Of the 15, over 67 percent were satisfied with the circle they had drawn and felt they had met the workshop's aim. Thirty percent were unsure.
The authors then built three scores: learning, vision, and communication. Their table compares the two programmes with mean ± standard error. Learning was 4.25 ± 0.29 in the AgriFood programme and 4.25 ± 0.43 in Sustainable Environments. Vision was 4.0 ± 0.29 and 4.25 ± 0.45. Communication was 3.5 ± 0.38 and 4.0 ± 0.42. Mann–Whitney tests gave p = 0.529 for learning, p = 0.456 for vision, and p = 0.529 for communication. None of the three separated the programmes. All three scores sat above the midpoint. In the authors' reading, learning was the highest of the three.
During the discussion, students worked a link between legislation and finances, and a negative link between lack of equipment modernisation and youth safety. Several still heard a minus sign as "a bad element," and some asked for more help on how to draw a connection at all.
The lesson is narrow and useful. A connection circle can help a group name causes and notice a link that a straight line had skipped. The boundary is the design of the evidence. These figures are ratings collected after the class. The paper has no pre-test and no class that skipped the circle. The authors ask readers to generalize with caution. They write that the sample does not represent students in general. Delays, subsystems, and points of leverage, they add, still need a causal loop diagram or a fuller group model. A 4.25 is a rating on their scale. It records how the class described the hour. A later study can put that rating next to a comparison group.
## Boundaries and Failure Modes
Connection Circles go vague when the words on the rim cannot move, and they overclaim when a classroom rating is asked to prove a change in the world.
The element has to be able to rise or fall, and the arrow has to be direct. A circle of slogans, or a chain that jumps three unseen steps, produces a neat picture of a cause nobody can point to. Five to ten elements is the lesson's cap. An eleventh arrow is easy. A story the group can retell is the harder test.
The circle ends where size, delay, and dominance begin. Visit counts, waiting weeks, and which loop is running this quarter belong on the next drawing. Move to a causal loop diagram for that structure. Move to stocks and flows when the decision needs amounts. A study that teaches several system drawings in one unit, and then reports one gain for the whole unit, is evidence about that unit. The gain belongs to the unit. Citing it as the effect of this circle alone borrows a result from a different question.
A common misuse is to treat the Galway ratings, or the fries lesson, as a measured change in farms, restaurants, or health. The ratings say how those 15 students described the session. The fries chapter is a reading exercise. Another misuse is to hear "connection circle" and assume a meeting in which people sit in a ring and pass a talking piece. That practice has its own purpose. This page is a diagram of elements and arrows.
## Common Misconceptions
Three mix-ups make the drawing either too final or too soft. Each one skips a rule from the lesson or a limit from the Galway case.
A connection circle is the step that gets elements and direct arrows onto one page, so a loop can be found. A causal loop diagram then names the loops, the delays, and the boundary of the system. Quaden and Ticotsky present the circle as that earlier step, because students often do not know where a loop diagram should start. Stopping at the circle leaves the delays unwritten.
The minus sign says the two elements move in opposite directions. In the Galway class, students could use a plus, and many still treated a negative connection as a bad thing entering the system. "Less modern equipment goes with less youth safety" is a claim about direction. It is not a verdict that equipment is a villain. Read the sign as a direction, then test the claim.
The lesson caps the rim at five to ten elements and prefers a direct arrow to a long leap. A page of crossings can hide the one path the group can tell. Satisfaction with a drawing, including the share of the Galway students who liked their own circle, is a report about the session. The arrows still have to survive a source, or a person who was there.
## Related Concepts
These pages sit beside the circle. Each one takes a job the rim and the arrows only start.
The next drawing: name the loops, write the delays, and say which boundary you chose. The circle is how many groups get the elements onto the page first.
A closed path in which a change comes back to its start. The circle helps you find that path. The loop page is where reinforcing and balancing behavior are the subject.
Amounts that accumulate, and the rates that fill or drain them. Use this when the circle has shown a path and the decision needs a quantity.
The habit of asking what the parts do to one another over time. Connection Circles are one classroom tool inside that habit.
A way to separate an event, a pattern, a structure, and the assumptions under them. The circle works on elements that change. The iceberg asks which layer those elements belong to.
A knowledge diagram whose lines carry linking phrases, so each line is a sentence you can check. The circle's arrow is a causal sign, which is a different kind of claim.
## One-Line Takeaway
Put only changing elements on the rim, draw an arrow only for a direct cause, and treat a closed path as the next question.
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