ISEA • Volume 43, Number 3, 2015 5 Global Systems Thinking in Education to End Poverty: Systems Leaders with a Concerted Push Patricia Briscoe Abstract: One of the leading challenges of global education is to reduce poverty. The purpose of this paper is to create a discussion about global systems thinking and systems leadership in terms of what is needed to achieve global goals in education. More speciically, systems leaders must support a concerted push to re-conceptualise an approach that is not limited or bounded by national education sectors. Global systems thinking involves increasing our abilities to understand parts that make up a whole and envision its interconnectedness; then look for leverage points for change, and make decisions based on the interdependency of all parts. A conceptual framework of a system for global systems thinking in education is presented. The expected outcome of this paper is to demonstrate that for education to contribute towards ending poverty, a concerted push is needed by systems leaders to build capacity of global systems thinking among all stakeholders. Introduction Systems are around us everywhere. We interact with them daily. It is widely accepted that systems thinking is a critical tool in addressing the many interrelated environmental, political, social and economic challenges of today (Senge 1990; Wright 2008). A reframing of systems thinking to be global, broadly focused, and to involve multiple stakeholders across various sectors interacting with each other (Best & Holmes 2010) to positively reform education eforts to end poverty is the argument in this paper. This paper is meant to problematise global systems leadership and begin a conversation among educators concerning a re-conceptualised system thinking to achieve global educational goals. A global systems lens gives us the ability to hone our understanding of parts and their interconnectedness; then to look for leverage points for change and to make decisions based on the interdependency of all parts (Best & Holmes 2010). As the world today is more interconnected and interdependent and is changing more rapidly than ever, all stakeholders in national and international development must develop understandings of the diferent levels of a system and its complexities, and reframe to a diferent way of doing and thinking (Senge, Hamilton & Kania 2015). The intent of this paper is to support these goals and contribute to the conversation. This paper is organised into ive sections. The irst section introduces a few pertinent facts about poverty and its relationship to education. Second, systems and systems thinking are deined and connected to systems leadership and its possibilities. In the third section, an example of both global and bounded system thinking is demonstrated. Then, a systems conceptual framework is