Year: 2024
Type of paper: Individual Paper
Abstract:
Systems thinking (ST) is the ability to reason about socio-ecological systems in terms of interrelated and interdependent networks and is considered essential in helping students understand many complex relationships that exist in the natural and social world. Therefore, systems thinking skills are one of the most important skills in science learning, and this paper examines what characteristics of systems thinking that Future Secondary School Teachers (FTs) can utilise with their students.
The main goal of this paper is to identify which characteristics of systems thinking 30 FTs use in a Problem Based Learning activity that they design to be implemented in the classrooms. Results were collected during the assessment of the designed activities, and revealed that they would be able to address four of the main features of the systems thinking: i) the establishment of indirect relationships; ii) the identification of feedback loop effects; iii) the consideration of different spatial and temporal scales; iv) the recognition of different dimensions of the problem. Among them, the latter - the recognition of different dimensions of the problem- is the feature that could most frequently work according to their designs, since FTs frequently involve different dimensions (such as the ecological, economic, social, cultural) when they address contents related to Biology subject. On the other hand, the identification of feedback loops is the element that is least addressed in FT proposals. Hence, it seems that using feedback loops to analyse interdependent relationships in socio-ecological systems remains challenging for FTs, since this way of thinking is counter-intuitive, but foundational for science teaching (Hokayem et al. 2019). The educational implications of these results are discussed, as well as their impact in teachers’ initial training.
The main goal of this paper is to identify which characteristics of systems thinking 30 FTs use in a Problem Based Learning activity that they design to be implemented in the classrooms. Results were collected during the assessment of the designed activities, and revealed that they would be able to address four of the main features of the systems thinking: i) the establishment of indirect relationships; ii) the identification of feedback loop effects; iii) the consideration of different spatial and temporal scales; iv) the recognition of different dimensions of the problem. Among them, the latter - the recognition of different dimensions of the problem- is the feature that could most frequently work according to their designs, since FTs frequently involve different dimensions (such as the ecological, economic, social, cultural) when they address contents related to Biology subject. On the other hand, the identification of feedback loops is the element that is least addressed in FT proposals. Hence, it seems that using feedback loops to analyse interdependent relationships in socio-ecological systems remains challenging for FTs, since this way of thinking is counter-intuitive, but foundational for science teaching (Hokayem et al. 2019). The educational implications of these results are discussed, as well as their impact in teachers’ initial training.