Black Boxes

The English Ideas Substack is a space for ideas, thoughts and materials to help English language teaching professionals transform their teaching.

© Robert A. Buckmaster

In systems theory, the concept of a black box refers to a theoretical construct that represents a system or a component whose internal workings are unknown or irrelevant for the purpose of analysis. In other words, it focuses on the inputs and outputs of the system without concerning itself with the internal mechanisms or processes…