Abstract:

The system perspective of teaching and learning of science enables the analysis of biological phenomena from a meta-cognitive point of view, emphasizing the whole on its all components and connections. The characteristics of biological systems are influenced from the different components and interactions that exist on the different levels of the organization. Therefor it is not possible to understand a phenomenon in the biological system, without the understanding of the whole components and processes that assembly it, on the different organization levels. The complexity that characterize these systems, and the conventional teaching method, which emphasize the components which construct the systems but deals unsatisfactory with the processes that exist in them, create many difficulties on the way of developing a system thinking. Thus raise the need in the development of effective tools for the analysis of systems and the data arrangement in teaching and learning.

The purposes of this study are: characterizing the biology system thinking components, of teachers and students of science and technology in the junior high school, on the topic of the transfer system in the human body, before and after the teaching-learning process, and analyzing the connection between them. In this necessity, a model for developing system thinking, was built, and integrated in the teaching and learning materials, as part of the new “Matmon” program in the Weizmann Institute of Science. This study combines the quantitative and the qualitative research methods.

The study findings point out that following the learning process, there was an evident improvement in the students’ ability to recognize components in the transfer system in the human body, while referring to the components on different organization levels, identification of structural bonds and procedural bonds between the different levels in the system, and thus organizing the system components in a mutuality weave. Much like the students, it seemed that the teachers deepened their way of system thinking following the teaching process, while each teacher emphasized a different aspect of the system thinking. The comparison between the system thinking components of the students and the teachers raised two interesting aspects: the first one refers to the type of the dominant bonds in the knowledge structure. The analysis of the bonds implies that students, which are learning in a class where the teacher tends to emphasize the procedural bonds in the system, present a significant improvement in their ability to identify these types of bonds. The second one refers to the organization levels in the system. It appears that students, which are learning in a class where the teacher emphasize the importance of the organization levels of the system, present a significant improvement in their ability to identify system components in the different organization levels and to bind between components on different organization levels.

Keywords:

Systems thinking, human transport system.