Subject: System Thinking and Dynamic Modeling Coference

Posted by Ruth Fruland on 6/16/2004

Message:

Greetings,

As a newcomer to the ST/SD education community, I'm looking forward to the conference in two weeks and meeting people who routinely use systems thinking and system dynamics to pursue their educational goals.

I've already talked with some of you long distance, and had the pleasure of meeting Ron Zaraza, Diana Fisher, Scott Guthrie and Richard Turnock, as well as Lees Stuntz during a visit to Portland last December.

As a doctoral candidate in Education at the University of Washington, my research question converged on "How would pre-service (student) teachers respond to and evaluate ST concepts and SD modeling?

To begin to answer this question, I recently presented a very short ST/SD introduction to preservice teachers in the teacher education program at the University of Washington as part of my dissertation study.
The good news is that the students' responses were positive. The bad news is that I didn't complete my study as planned. The timing (at the end of the school year), the length of time (two weeks, 10 contact hours), the amount of new material I was asking them to absorb, and their other course commitments, all worked against my completing the study as I had planned it.

As part of my effort to evaluate (salvage) the study and demonstrate the versatility and usefulness of systems thinking and system dynamics to my committee members and College of Education faculty, I plan to develop a simple model that would capture the dynamics of the students' behavior over time (changing level of motivation, level of effort?) based on the competing demands on their time and energy.

So one question I have is, "Is there a session during the conference where this would be an appropriate problem to discuss (e.g., "Intermediate/Advanced Model Building Workshop" with Jim and Deb Lyneis; or "Creating Content Specific Lessons Incorporating System Dynamics Models" with Diana Fisher)?
(If not, that's fine.)

Alternatively, are there any conference attendees who might be interested in providing me (have I mentioned I'm a novice?) some guidance on creating such a model? Just in case, I'll bring information about the student teachers' first year's course of study and assignments, and I'll be interviewing a few of the students to try to better understand how the teacher education program is designed. (If not, that's fine.)

Regardless, I know the conference will be a fascinating and productive experience for me, and I look forward to it with great expectations.

Sincerely,
Ruth Fruland
PhD candidate
Curriculum & Instruction
College of Education
University of Washington
Office: (206) 616-1499