This study examines how middle school students develop an increasingly coherent understanding of aquatic ecosystems. As part of a broader design research study that used Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) theory as an organizing conceptual representation, we created two instructional units that focused on pond and aquarium environments. We coded…

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…

This article presents the findings of a comprehensive skills-and-competencies analysis conducted among incoming Engineering and Health Sciences freshmen at a leading technological university in Mexico. The primary objective was to determine whether these students possessed an ideal competency profile that would effectively prepare them to meet the…

Schools are ideal settings to promote adolescent physical activity (PA), yet school-based interventions have shown limited long-term impact. This position paper presents key issues surrounding school-based PA interventions. Collaborative conceptual thinking drawing on multi-author expertise and available evidence advanced our understanding and…

System pausing at pre-determined positions during multimedia presentations can enhance multimedia learning. However, the pause positions are usually set up based on the structure of the learning material (e.g., segmentation principle) rather than on the complexity of its different sections (as determined by levels of element interactivity,…

Concept map (CM) is introduced as a useful tool for studying students' system thinking (ST). However, it is more known to represent students' knowledge of system components and organization and less recognized as a tool to examine and enhance students' understanding about the underlying causal mechanisms in complex systems. In this study, through…

Centerness is defined as a quality of multi-agent systems (groups) where agents share a common set of system goals and interact so the system will achieve those goals. A pair of measures is identified to capture the two dimensions of centerness: distance-weighted fragmentation and average goal centerness. As a case study, the measures of…

The role of student support in enabling successful student outcomes is widely acknowledged. However, student support functions and the structures within which they reside often emerge independently at universities, and are seldom designed with integration in mind, leading to systemic inefficiencies. This paper draws on systems thinking to develop…

This paper, presented in three parts, overviews the current understandings of the Earth System and the relatively recent interdisciplinary field of Earth System Science (ESS) from a school education perspective. The representation of ESS in the Australian Curriculum is explored through the Cross Curriculum Priority area of Sustainability and the…

A Future Search (FS) Conference is a systems based large group intervention that utilizes a dialogue process among interdependent stakeholders to analyze the past, understand the present, envision a better future, and agree to action plans to work towards the desired future. This study uses an instrumental case study design (Stake, 1995) to…

Educators within agricultural and natural resource disciplines are tasked with educating students to critically engage with and problem-solve complex issues. As society's relationship with science and technology changes, coupled with an information-dense environment, strategies for sustainably addressing complex issues are needed. One potential…

A simple experiment was developed to introduce students to the sustainable procurement of water through fog harvesting that can be used for drinking or irrigation purposes. Access to clean water and sanitation is problematic particularly within dry regions such as in areas of Peru, although there is a significant amount of fog in the mountainous…

This report describes a study of three English teachers' and three students' participation in two high school environment clubs. Teachers' and students' interview perceptions were analyzed based a critical inquiry systems thinking framework involving inferences of purposes, outcomes, norms, and beliefs/discourses constituting…

Exploring students' systems thinking (ST) is essential in enhancing science learning, but existing studies have failed to understand students' ST fully as it relates to ecological issues. This study aimed to fill the aforementioned literature gap by exploring lower-secondary school students' ST regarding ecological issues. The Systems Thinking…

Anchored in the work of Fanon (1952), Mbembe (2019), and Spivak (1988), I take an autoethnographic journey that traces colonization and the subtle forces of coercion that exist in the academy and society, particularly in the US. I draw on Holland et al. (1998) to position myself in a figured world, a unique constellatory network of histories,…