By considering the interconnectedness of various elements, such as curriculum, instruction, assessment, and school organization, systems thinking provides a framework to understand the underlying patterns, feedback loops, and leverage points that shape educational outcomes. Frick's (1993) systems view of restructuring education supports the notion…

The growing differentiation of specialties in education creates the need for a common framework. This chapter discusses the basic premises of complex dynamical systems theory (CDST), its intellectual foundations, and its applicability to the field of education, with a particular focus on the areas of learning and development, school reform, and…

A system of climate learning includes students, educators, administrators, educational leaders, community members, and others across different contexts and from diverse lived experiences. As people begin to foster climate learning within these systems, the work of drawing people together in this work can seem daunting. However, the lessons from…

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 threw the world into an unexpected turmoil; schools were closed, exams cancelled, and educational systems were forced to react to deep and unexpected changes. In educational policy, however, the idea that we should prepare for an unknown, uncontrollable and risky future has been widely accepted long…

Systems thinking in chemistry education (STICE) has been proposed as an approach that could better equip students with abilities to connect their chemistry knowledge with other disciplines and with the skills needed to tackle complex global issues. However, educational change in chemistry is a complex effort that involves many interconnected…

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…

Background/purpose: Although studies on teacher research are becoming more common in English language teaching (ELT), there is still a lack of understanding regarding how university lecturers shape their research identities. Using Ecological systems theory and Self-determination theory, this study examines the construction of research identities…

In interdisciplinary studies, multiple definitions and practices proliferate. Interdisciplinarians such as William H. Newell claim that complex systems theory provides the rationale that we need to guide reform. However, complex systems theory alone cannot rationalize interdisciplinarity and inform what Ernest Boyer calls the scholarship of…

This article is part of a wide-scope research examining teachers' perceptions regarding the organizational profile of their school. Research participants were asked about nine parameters that outline the school's organizational structure (Chen-Levi, 2019). Main research questions were: How do the three different groups of position-holders in the…

To improve teaching and learning outcomes, teachers and head teachers need whole-system support to build professionalism and enhance their practice. Roles at the middle tier of education systems, or those professionals working between the school and central level, offer unique capacities to facilitate collaboration, broker knowledge, scale…

Across the globe, education has recently been through a major semantic shift, where new notions such as 'learning', 'competences', 'projects' came to replace or complement an older, more established, educational vocabulary. The political approach to education has also evolved, as many authors have underlined, from established national forms of…

Recently, the chemistry education community has focused considerable effort on incorporating systems thinking into chemistry education as a means to address global challenges such as sustainability. In this project, a series of exploratory workshops was held with secondary educators (N = 12) and tertiary educators and researchers (N = 16),…

To improve teaching and learning outcomes, teachers and head teachers need whole-system support to build professionalism and enhance their practice. Roles at the middle tier of education systems, or those professionals working between the school and central level, offer unique capacities to facilitate collaboration, broker knowledge, scale…

The Soil Nutrient Relationships course serves juniors and seniors with a major or minor in agronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Pre-pandemic enrollment averaged 65 students. In 2021 and 2022, course enrollment was 42 and 55, respectively. The course was adjusted to a flipped design in 2017. Moving into 2021, the Soil Nutrient…

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Virginia Tech is in the fourth year of a large-scale change project called "Revolutionizing Engineering Departments" (NSF RED) (Lord et al., 2018). Our project has three interrelated goals: (1) broaden the range of students entering the department, (2) expand the boundaries…