Subject: Modelling in Education

Posted by Tim Joy on 4/24/2010
In Reply To:Modelling in Education Posted by Gary Hirsch on 4/22/2010

Message:

In one way, modeling occurs in education all day, every day, in every school throughout the globe. We just don't call it that. Since modeling is seen as "other" (add-on, extra, advanced, enrichment, pick your term), it's put in the metaphoric "when I have time" pile of things to learn.

But teachers are already doing it every day! And teachers are modeling systems, too. Every lesson, every assignment, every assessment reveals some facet of a teacher's or school's system of instruction.

As for modeling system dynamics . . . well, what a challenge! As system dynamics represents both a world view and a set of skills (or a set of skills through which one shifts world views), the ramp for change and implementation can be pretty steep. But there are indicators that the incline may be leveling some, especially as a younger generation of teachers come in the pipeline with a nomenclature that narrates a systemic view of things. The books and video games that reside in the imaginations of young teachers are no longer products of a reductionist view. In short, a wave of educators is coming along ripe for the tools and understandings of system dynamics.

What will we see in the next generation? Teachers born in the last two decades of the 20th century whose view of things is quite different from those born in the 1950's and 1960's, who came of age in the 60's and 70's.

But there is work to do, lessons to create, simulations to have ready, new software that leans a bit more toward the liberal arts.

Tim Joy
Portland, Oregon