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 factors that enable or hinder chemistry educators' adoption of new pedagogical approaches. Using an adapted version of the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform (TCSR) model, we investigated factors that connect with chemistry educators' willingness and ability to implement a STICE approach in their courses. We surveyed a group of 56 secondary and postsecondary chemistry educators from ten different countries, to capture chemistry educators' perspectives toward a STICE approach. Through thematic analysis of responses, we identified four key themes as follows. Theme 1: Educators' willingness and ability to implement STICE is influenced by their knowledge, beliefs, experiences, contextual and personal factors; Theme 2: Educators report experiences with aspects of STICE without knowing or specifically calling it ST; Theme 3: Some educators implement limited aspects of STICE when teaching chemistry in context; and Theme 4: The ratings of barriers can guide priorities for educational change efforts. This paper discusses specific aspects of the reform model that experts and administrators can address to reduce barriers to implement and engage with STICE. We also highlight future chemistry education research that is needed to explore specific aspects of educators' perspectives and STICE more broadly.

New resources have recently been emerging for educators to implement systems thinking (ST) in chemistry education, including a proposed set of ST skills. While these efforts aim to make ST implementation easier, little is known about how to assess these skills in a chemistry context. In this study, we investigated ST skills employed by students who constructed system maps of a topic related to climate change. Eighteen undergraduate chemistry students from first- to third-year participated in this study. We designed and implemented a ST intervention to capture how students engaged with three ST tasks, performed individually and collaboratively. In our analysis, we focused on 11 ST skills that aligned with five characteristics proposed in a recent study. We found that participants demonstrated most of these ST skills when engaging with the ST tasks, with nuances. Participants’ system maps: (1) lacked concepts and connections at the submicroscopic level, (2) included multiple types of connections but few circular loops and causal connections, (3) lacked causal reasoning, although participants did predict how their system maps changed over time, (4) demonstrated the breadth of connections but did not describe human connections to the underlying chemistry of climate change topics. These findings identify aspects of ST where chemistry educators need to place emphasis when teaching ST skills to chemistry students and when guiding learning activities and other assessments. Using our findings, we created an adaptable ST rubric for the chemistry community as a tool for assessing ST skills.

Recently, increased attention towards systems thinking (ST) in chemistry education has aimed to bridge disciplines and equip citizens and scientists with skills needed to address global challenges such as sustainability and climate change. As a result, new resources have emerged for educators to implement systems thinking in chemistry education (STICE), including a proposed set of ST skills. While these efforts aim to make ST implementation easier, little is known about how to assess these skills in a chemistry context. Additionally, there are no studies that have investigated how chemistry students naturally engage with ST learning activities; such information would guide educators about where to place emphasis when teaching ST skills. In this study, we investigated ST skills employed by students who constructed visual representations (systems) of a topic related to climate change. Eighteen undergraduate chemistry students from first- to third-year participated in this study. We designed and implemented a ST intervention to capture how students engaged with three ST tasks, performed individually and collaboratively. In our analysis, we assessed eleven ST skills that aligned with the five characteristics of STICE proposed by York and Orgill. We found that most participants demonstrated these ST skills when assessing ST skills exactly as articulated in the literature. When further investigating the extent that participants demonstrated these skills, we identified aspects of these skills that participants did and did not demonstrate. We found that (1) participants’ systems lacked concepts and connections at the submicroscopic level, (2) participants’ systems included multiple types of connections in their systems but few circular loops and causal connections, (3) participants predicted how their systems changed over time but lacked multicomponent causal reasoning, and (4) participants’ systems demonstrated the breadth of connections but did not consider human connections to the underlying chemistry of climate change topics. These findings identify aspects of ST where chemistry educators need to place emphasis when teaching ST skills to chemistry students and when guiding learning activities and other assessments. Using our findings, we created a ST rubric for the chemistry community as a tool for assessing ST skills.

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, with the skills needed to tackle complex global issues. However, educational change in chemistry is a complex effort that involves many interconnected factors that enable or hinder chemistry educators’ adoption of new pedagogical approaches. Using an adapted version of the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform (TCSR) model, we investigated factors that connect with chemistry educators’ willingness and ability to implement a STICE approach in their courses. We surveyed a group of 56 secondary and post-secondary chemistry educators from ten different countries, to capture chemistry educators’ perspectives towards a STICE approach. Through thematic analysis of responses, we found that educators’ willingness and ability to implement STICE is influenced by their knowledge, beliefs, experiences, contextual and personal factors. We discuss specific aspects of the reform model that experts and administrators can address to reduce barriers to implement and engage with STICE. We also highlight future chemistry education research that is needed to explore specific aspects of educators’ perspectives and STICE more broadly.