This article examines the effects of education system types and characteristics on changes in the distributions of literacy and numeracy skills during the upper secondary phase of education and training. Whereas there is a substantial literature on system effects on skills during the primary and lower secondary phases of education, much less has…

The purpose of the current study is to examine malleable school practices and norms that contribute to inequitable school learning environments based on student background. Using multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) with the U.S. sample of PISA 2015, this study examines the extent to which student-level access to inquiry-based science…

Systems thinking is regarded as a key competence in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD), because it helps students to understand the complexity and dynamics of natural, social and economic systems. In our research group, we developed a competence model that distinguishes four dimensions of systems thinking in ESD. Based on…

Every teacher's classroom practice is embedded in a system of overlapping contexts that interact with their day-to-day decisions. In this paper, I focus on sociocultural context and how it interacts with teachers' subjective responses to accountability instruments. Drawing on interviews with secondary school teachers in Finland and Singapore --…

A systems-based classroom intervention on environmental education was designed for seventh grade students; the results were evaluated to see its impact on the development of systems thinking skills and standard science achievement and whether the systems approach is a more effective way to teach environmental issues that are dynamic and complex. A…

The aim of this study is to determine the needs of special education teachers about curriculum development, and to implement the constructivist approach to in-service training programme for special education teachers. Furthermore, this study seeks to evaluate the developed in-service training programme. The descriptive and experimental methods…

This study investigates the effect of the systemic approach in literacy achievement of the first grade students at Mu'tah University's Model School. The sample (N = 45) consisted of all first grade students, who were assigned into two groups; a control group taught traditionally while the other group was exposed to the system approach during the…

This is the second of two reports on the first year activities and results of the Systems Thinking and Curriculum Innovation Project (STACI), a two-year project which is examining the cognitive demands and consequences of using the STELLA (Structural Thinking Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation) software to teach systems thinking,…