Subject: Emprical research about how to teach/learn systems thinking skills

Posted by Dexter Chapin on 3/11/2007
In Reply To:Emprical research about how to teach/learn systems thinking skills Posted by Patrick Kunz on 2/23/2007

Message:

I teach Biology and Cultural Anthropology to high school seniors and juniors at a laptop school. Both classes build and use Stella models. But truth be told, not many of my students will ever explicitly build a Stella model once they leave my classes. So I believe there is a value to teaching systems thinking, independent of systems modeling. I try to do both but the enduring understandings that I want my students to have are about the theory, more than about the models.
My operational definition of systems thinking includes, but is not limited to, the following summary axioms and corollaries:
1) Natural systems are far from entropy; therefore they represent potential energy in the form of structure, pattern, or difference.
2) Natural systems almost always have boundaries, for without boundaries there is likely to be no potential energy (structure, pattern, difference)
3) Natural systems need inputs of energy and material to maintain their potential energy and are therefore tightly linked to the laws of thermodynamics.
The universal waste product of Biological systems is heat.
Waste products are always toxic to the producer.
Therefore, Biological systems are tightly linked to the scaling law.
4) 4) Every natural system has one, or many, critical variables that must be maintained within a narrow range or the system dissolves
Critical variables evolve slowly, if at all.
Similar natural systems have similar critical variables
Every critical variable is part of one, or several, negative feedback loops.
Feedback loops can evolve, sometimes quickly.
The structure and function of the feedbacks are the adaptive variables
The adaptive variables define and identify the natural system.
5) Adaptive variables are limited; to the nearest .01, 100% of all natural systems are extinct.
6) Natural systems are organized at four levels;
Structure; these are the subsystems
Pattern; this is how subsystems are linked
Process; this is the interaction of the subsystems, and with the metasystem
Mind; the collection, processing of, and response to, information.

Everything I and my students do in class can be tightly tied to one or more of these statements. These are the statements that generate most of not all the questions that my students explore during the course of the year in discussions, and field research. These are the questions that guide the building of Stella models.
I do not have many tests in my classes. But the above statements can be the basis for a wide range of rubrics for a wide range of activities.
Does this make any sense?