The prevalence of systems thinking pedagogy is growing in classrooms because of its inclusion in the Next Generation Science Standards and its potential as a tool for addressing complex, global problems. While most of the research on systems thinking targets the ways students develop system thinking skills, this qualitative study explores…

Understanding molecular processes and coordinating the various activities across levels of organization in biological systems is a complicated task, yet many curricular guidelines indicate that undergraduate students should master it. Employing mechanistic reasoning can facilitate describing and investigating biological phenomena. Biofilms are an…

The purpose of this study is to explore the development of pre-service science teachers' systems thinking skills through an outdoor education for sustainable development (ESD) course. The study was composed of four stages, which are defining systems thinking skills, designing an outdoor ESD course, developing measurement tools, and implementation.…

This article concentrates on the question what kind of model--conceptual and statistical--can serve as a good working model for the study of learning and teaching processes qua processes. We claim that a good way of answering this question is to begin by observing a teaching and learning process as, where, and when it occurs. In addition, a…

Students in rural and urban areas in Tanzania, and elsewhere in Africa, continue to have limited or lack access to culturally and employment-relevant science education. The current case study, a 2007-2009 examination of barriers to the reform movement of science education in Tanzania, uses data from interviews, classroom observations, document…

The complex topic of global climate change continues to be a challenging yet important topic among science educators and researchers. This mixed methods study adds to the growing research by investigating student conceptions of climate change from a system theory perspective (Von Bertalanffy, 1968) by asking the question, "How do differences…

This book, prepared in the context of the "UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)", also known as "Rio+20", contains the papers submitted to the "World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities (WSSD-U-2012)", which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 5 and 6 June 2012. It pursues the following main aims: to document and…

Encourages use of case studies to introduce "real-life" engineering assignments, suggesting that they should be given in a natural order as a series. Describes three such assignments being used at the University of the West Indies. Description, analysis, and design of an existing engineering system is included. (JM)

The University of Colorado, under contract with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), is conducting a study of curriculum reform in science, mathematics, and higher order thinking across the disciplines. This paper provides some of the background for this research as well as information on the conceptual framework and design…

This qualitative case study reports on processes and outcomes of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded System-Wide Change for All Learners and Educators (SCALE) project at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN). It addresses a critical challenge in studying systemic reform in complex organizations: the lack of methodologies that…