Regarding future ecological challenges, it is highly relevant for students to understand the processes within ecosystems and the effects of external influences on their conservation. Since ecosystems are complex, difficulties in learning are often examined from a systems thinking perspective. However, challenges also arise in other areas,…

Complex systems affect every part of our lives from the ecosystems that we inhabit and share with other living organisms to the systems that supply our water (i.e., water cycle). Evaluating events, entities, problems, and systems from multiple perspectives is known as a "systems thinking" approach. New curriculum standards have made…

Project EQuIPD--Engaging Quality Instruction through Professional Development--sought to establish and test for efficacy a professional development model to produce highly qualified teachers in STEM practices for all children, especially for students who are in traditionally underserved schools and districts within the State of Florida. The…

Teachers play a role in promoting teaching and learning strategies to address the complexity of concepts. Systems thinking is a strategy for achieving meaningful learning. Doubt exists over the extent to which the latter has been converted into appropriate classroom practice at under-resourced rural schools in one province in South Africa. This…

The study used activity systems analysis to characterize the processes, dynamics, and tensions in the social practices developed by a class of academic low-achievers in a knowledge-building environment augmented by analytics-supported reflective assessment. A class of 37 Grade 9 low-achievers and an experienced teacher participated this study.…

Reasoning about systems is necessary for understanding many modern issues that face society and is important for future scientists and all citizens. Systems thinking may allow students to make connections and identify common themes between seemingly different situations and phenomena, and is relevant to the focus on cross-cutting concepts in…

The authors developed a framework of empirically grounded curricular goals for water-science literacy and documented the challenges that students face in achieving these goals. Water-related environmental science literacy requires an understanding of connected natural and human-engineered systems at multiple scales ranging from atomic-molecular…

There is growing recognition of the importance of helping children to develop an ability to think about biological and environmental issues in terms of systems interactions and impacts. Several progressions have been published that suggest how their conceptual understandings may develop over time. However these are not necessarily as informative…