System thinking skills at the elementary school level

Orit Ben‐Zvi Assaraf · Nir Orion

245 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Research in Science Teaching

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Science Education and Pedagogy Geography Education and Pedagogy Education and Critical Thinking Development

Abstract

Abstract This study deals with the development of system thinking skills at the elementary school level. It addresses the question of whether elementary school students can deal with complex systems. The sample included 40 4th grade students from one school in a small town in Israel. The students studied an inquiry‐based earth systems curriculum that focuses on the hydro‐cycle. The program involved lab simulations and experiments, direct interaction with components and processes of the water cycle in the outdoor learning environment and knowledge integration activities. Despite the students' minimal initial system thinking abilities, most of them made significant progress with their ability to analyze the hydrological earth system to its components and processes. As a result, they recognized interconnections between components of a system. Some of the students reached higher system thinking abilities, such as identifying interrelationships among several earth systems and identifying hidden parts of the hydrological system. The direct contact with real phenomena and processes in small scale scenarios enabled these students to create a concrete local water cycle, which could later be expanded into large scale abstract global cycles. The incorporation of outdoor inquiry‐based learning with lab inquiry‐based activities and knowledge integration assignments contributed to the 4th grade students' capacity to develop basic system thinking abilities at their young age. This suggests that although system thinking is regarded as a high order thinking skill, it can be developed to a certain extent in elementary school. With a proper long‐term curriculum, these abilities can serve as the basis for the development of higher stages of system thinking at the junior–high/middle school level. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 540–563, 2010

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 245 citations exist upstream.

References

1994Handbook of Qualitative Research 1998Qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions.2010THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS 1990Qualitative evaluation and research methods, 2nd ed.2012Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials 1994An Expanded Sourcebook Qualitative Data Analysis 1995Handbook of research on science teaching and learning 2003The psychology of personal constructs

Cited by

2012A learning progression for water in socio‐ecological systems 2019Applications of Systems Thinking in STEM Education 2017Teaching and Learning About Complex Systems in K–12 Science Education: A Review of Empirical Studies 1995–2015 2012Assessing System Thinking Through Different Concept-Mapping Practices 2014Using representational tools to learn about complex systems: A tale of two classrooms 2020ChEMIST Table: A Tool for Designing or Modifying Instruction for a Systems Thinking Approach in Chemistry Education

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.