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Cognitive Maturity
Posted by Wade Schuette on 11/16/2007
In Reply To:Cognitive Maturity Posted by Peter Hovmand on 11/16/2007
Alice - fascinating question. I'm tacking my reply onto Peter's reply to respond to that at the same time. Peter suggests the hypothesis that our educational system effectively work-hardens students against systems thinking, so readiness would be inversely proportional to age / grade. Since much of our educational system is built around the idea that students become more prepared as they advance, it would be a great topic to look at and simply determine rigorously whether there is a correlation and, if so, what the sign is.
Finally, for example, I see there is recognition in the US that foreign language instruction should start at Kindergarten, not high school.
I spent several years trying to teach graduate students some basics necessary for General Relativity, and noted then that they arrive in the world believing that volume depends on shape, then they are trained out of that (as Piaget noted) so that pouring the orange juice into a wide low cup instead of a tall, narrow cup doesn't bother them. Then they get to graduate school and I try to explain that volume, in general, does too depend on shape, and they just don't want to hear it.
I looked at Frank Draper's paper on proposed sequence for developing systems thinking in 4-12 curriculum, and think that the focus on the internals of models and computing is too early, to the neglect of even higher order but more basic skills such as learning how to consult with a group to think about what might go into a model, or how to use a basic model or animation to discuss a topic with someone else or a group. In that sense, I suggest that "skills in conversations about systems" should not be neglected or left until some indeterminate "later," because many circuits of the learning "spiral" will be required to get comfortable with those social skills.
Prior to that, or along with it, could be trying to develop basic "white board" skills, such as drawing a shared diagram at all of anything while discussing it. "Explaining things with helpful diagrams" is a useful earlier skill more general than explaining a Behavior-over-time graph.
Learning how to use a whiteboard to be complete, or to be explicit, and to actually achieve shared understanding instead of mis-understandings could be emphasized in every grade, but I don't think it's taught at all right now. Learning how to reveal your thinking so that you can surface criticisms of it by the crowd, and accepting those graciously is a helpful skill. Learning to participate in or lead a discussion where multiple people critique a very simple model and tweak it to a better state doesn't require very complex models at all but does require a lot of practice.
Simply realizing that things that influence each other in a loop behave differently than things that influence each other in a chain could be, I'd think, started very early. The single-loop archetype of a feud escalating is something they will have experienced, and the idea that you have to break to the loop to stop the feud is something I wish more adults understood. The idea that the loop might be large, and feedback might be delayed a long time, and that leads to other strange effects is also something I'd think they could grasp very early and simulate with role playing, no computer required. Understanding blame and fault and conflict resolution is something they will relate to already. Grasping that the behavior someone else is showing may be the delayed result of something you yourself did earlier is a key concept that seems mostly missing in discussions of the Mideast, sources of terrorism, etc., but I'd think a Kindergarten student could grasp that and learn that it has a name, and they could name it when they see it happening in their class or family or on the playground.
Recognizing that maybe Mr. Fergis treats you like a jerk because you act like one and have created a self-fulfilling prophecy might be helpful wisdom to some students who are fast to take offense but slow to accept responsibility for how other people treat them. Recognizing that minor issues can escalate to major issues and polarizing issues that latch into place with just a setting of the parameters can be modeled with role-model play, no computer required.
If we could simply get single-loop effects understood, named, and recognized by every 6th grader, I think that would be massive progress over where we are today -- especially if they also knew how to draw a diagram or wave their hands and actually be able to explain it to a person who didn't understand it, like a sibling or parent or other adult. Understanding how depression can lead to withdrawal that can lead to depression that can lead to withdrawal etc. is a lesson they need by 6th grade, if not before. "Spirals can sneak up on ya and get ya" is a great understanding.
If we could get those terms into common usage for a whole new generation so they can see "Wait, we're X" or "That's probably just Y" it would be so far ahead of where we are now.
Yes, with that base, then some students may advance to multi-loop archetypes and computer simulation and fancier representations and graphs and animations and flight-simulators. But those could come on top of conversational fluency already acquired in K-4 and I don't mean they are conversant in, I mean they can carry on a meaningful conversation with each other using the terms.
Wade Schuette
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI USA
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