Increasing interconnectedness of people and goods enhances the complexity of geographical problems. For students to understand geography, systems thinking--and in this context, the use of causal diagrams--is a promising approach. A quasi-experimental design is used in which the systems thinking ability of students working with causal diagrams is…

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…

In this mixed-methods study, we examined if students benefitted from a game design course offered during an enrichment hour in terms of gains in their system analysis and design skills. Students at a rural middle school in Southeast US (n = 19) attended a 1-hour game design course offered weekly during an academic enrichment class period, for the…

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…

Systems' thinking has become increasingly relevant not only in education for sustainable development but also in everyday life. Even if teachers know the dynamics and complexity of living systems in biology and geography, they might not be able to effectively explain it to students. Teachers need an understanding of systems and their behaviour…

In this two-part study, we examine undergraduate university students' expression of two important system thinking characteristics--dynamic thinking and cyclic thinking--focusing particularly on students of geology. The study was conducted using an Earth systems questionnaire designed to elicit and reflect either dynamic or cyclic thinking. The…

The study explores how a complexity approach empowers science learning. A complexity approach represents systems as many interacting entities. The construct of micro-macro compatibility is introduced, the degree of similarity between behaviors at the micro- and macro-levels of the system. Seventh-grade students' learning about gases was studied…

Efficacious interventions to promote long-term maintenance of physical activity are not well understood. Engineers have developed methods to create dynamical system models for modeling idiographic (i.e., within-person) relationships within systems. In behavioral research, dynamical systems modeling may assist in decomposing intervention effects…

Adult Basic Education (ABE) and the General Equivalency Diploma (GED) programs serve those students who, for whatever reason, have left the educational system without attaining a regular high school diploma. Because of the manner in which they may have left the school system, many have negative emotions and personal agency beliefs hindering their…

Pedagogical agents, characters that guide through multimedia learning environments, recently gained increasing interest. A review was published by Clarebout, Elen, Johnson and Shaw in 2002 where a lot of promises were made, but research on the motivational and learning effects of pedagogical agents was scarce. More than 70 articles on pedagogical…

We investigated the effects of My Teaching Partner-Secondary (MTP-S), a teacher professional development intervention, on students' peer relationships in middle and high school classrooms. MTP-S targets increasing teachers' positive interactions with students and sensitive instructional practices and has demonstrated improvements in students'…

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Improvements Act of 2001 (MCKV), which provides funds to local educational agencies (LEAs), is almost a decade old, yet no evaluations of its academic effectiveness have been reported. Using a systems theory framework, the authors answer the question of whether homeless students in grade 6 from LEAs…

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…

Scope and Method of Study: This study develops, implements, and evaluates a new economics teaching pedagogy based on the U.S. Army's systems approach to training model. Using the approach, tasks are identified that compose the task domain for the Principles of Microeconomics course. From the 130 identified tasks, 73 are used by Economics of…

This discussion of educational technology and the role of computers is based on the author's experiences with the United Kingdom's National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning (NDPCAL). Highlights include curriculum development; teachers' roles; research and development; evaluation; control group experiments; instructional…