Abstract:

Systems thinking is often not systematically taught in secondary education even though it is known that learners do not develop this kind of thinking on their own. As a result, students have limited skills and are insufficiently equipped for the challenges of modern society. Additionally, educators are searching for didactic approaches and accompanying tools that enable and support learners in actively creating their knowledge and developing their skills.

To address these challenges, we are transforming techniques from Artificial Intelligence known as Qualitative Reasoning into an interactive browser application that allows learners to independently construct system diagrams that explain the behaviour of systems, especially emphasising cause-effect reasoning. Our work consists of a 4-year project during which we refine the software and develop and evaluate the required learning material in close collaboration with high school teachers in the Netherlands (grade 9 to 12).

We have developed an online workspace for teachers and learners. In addition to the overall software information website (https://www.dynalearn.nl) it consists of three spaces: create, material and administration, each with a unique URL (https://create.dynalearn.nl, etc.). Create refers to the software for creating qualitative representations (runs as an app in common browsers). Although available for use and fully functioning, the app is occasionally updated with new features developed in the project when these features have become sufficient stable. The front end of Create is a JavaScript-based app for creating, running and inspecting qualitative representations. Material refers to the database with educational materials. Models, assignments and supporting documents developed and evaluated in the project are made available for wider use via this database. An Administration system is available that allows teachers to place students in projects (e.g., analogous to existing classes) and allow them to participate in a learning activity. For each project the teacher can specify specific settings regarding the working of the software and as such steer the kind of systems thinking the students will engage with.

In this contribution, we report on the ideas behind this project (Denker, https://denker.nu) and on the results obtained during the first year in which we worked with teachers and learners in grade 9.

Keywords:

Systems thinking, Secondary education, Conceptual models.