Unpacking Layered Drivers: Tugging on the Threads of Systemic Change

When we began this work, we weren’t trying to build a new model. We were just trying to make sense of why meaningful change so often stalls—even when the will is there. As researchers and practitioners committed to Professional Practice with real-world impact, we’ve grown wary of single-point interventions. A new policy here, a workshop there—too often, these well-meaning efforts fail to shift the system in any lasting way.

So we stepped back and looked more broadly.

What emerged was what we’ve come to call the Layered Drivers “isms” framework. In doing this work, we’ve applied and extended Boehnert’s levels of sexism, which maps how systemic gender bias manifests across scales—from cultural narratives to personal beliefs. At the Layered Drivers heart is a simple but powerful realisation: systems of oppression are layered and operate at multiple layers at the same time. They operate at the ideological level (the ideas that underpin a worldview), at the symbolic level (language, media, and representation), at the institutional and structural levels (rules, processes, norms), and right through to the interpersonal and internalised. You can’t just fix one layer and expect the others to fall in line. Real change requires recognising the tangle – and tugging on multiple threads.

But we extended the logic, developing a more generalised structure for diagnosing and responding to a wide range of “isms”: racism, sexism, colonialism, ableism – each with its own tangled hierarchy of drivers, but with common dynamics we could map.

A Model for Complex Change

The framework is more than a list of categories. It’s a lens to interrogate practice. For each level, we identified concrete statements you might hear in real organisational contexts—such as “it’s just the way things are” (ideological), or “we don’t have anyone who can lead that” (institutional), or “I’m not sure I belong here” (internalised). Paired with these, we offered targeted levers: what might actually work to shift things at that level.

Bringing It to Life

In our presentation, we applied the Layered Drivers framework to three Professional Practice research contexts:

• Decolonising computing: revealing how deeply embedded assumptions about technology and knowledge production perpetuate colonial worldviews—even when the curriculum appears neutral.
• Professional identity in technical leadership: where gendered and racialised notions of leadership are upheld symbolically and institutionally, even as individuals try to push through.
• Emancipatory leadership: where the desire to lead for justice is too often constrained by layers of internalised doubt and organisational inertia.

Across all three, the framework helped us make sense of the forces at play—not as isolated problems, but as interwoven patterns. And crucially, it helped point toward multi-level strategies for intervention.

Where Next?

We believe the Layered Drivers framework holds real potential for Professional Practice research—as both an analytical tool and a scaffold for designing change. It’s particularly useful in the messy, real-world complexity of systems work, where no one lever is enough.

Our next steps? We’re exploring how the model can be used at the very beginning of a research project: to frame positionality, define context, and shape inquiry from the outset.

Because if change is what we’re after, then we need better maps of the terrain—and the courage to tug on more than one thread at a time.

Paper: Mann, S., Myers, R., Guruge, D., Vaughan, J., & Karetai, M. (2024). Layered Drivers Framework ITP Research Symposium: OPSITARA Symposium, Christchurch.