By some estimates, over 1.2 billion tons of soil was blown across the Great Plains during the height of the Dust Bowl. The so-called "black blizzards" these massive dust storms caused suffocated cattle, sickened children, and destroyed thousands of family farms. Formerly prosperous farmers, unsure why they had such bad luck, wondered if…

Present and future social and ecological challenges are complex both to understand and to attempt to solve. To comprehend the complex systems underlying these issues, students need systems thinking skills. However, in science education, a uniform delineation of systems thinking across contexts has yet to be established. While there seems to be…