A Method for Measuring Systems Thinking Learning

Abstract

The myriad of problems facing the world today are increasingly complex, dynamic, and transcend multiple domains. This necessitates the need for trans-disciplinary approaches capable of providing a framework to help solve these problems. Systems thinking provides the skills necessary for people to approach these types of problems. However, a lack of awareness and understanding of systems thinking hinders a potential systems-literate and systems-capable society. Systems thinking is comprised of four underlying concepts or skills: distinction-making, organizing systems, inter-relating, and perspective-taking. The path to becoming a systems thinker follows a process comprised of three levels—sensibility (awareness of systems), literacy (knowledge of systems), and capability (understanding of systems)—repeated across multiple learning phases. During this research study, a method was defined to measure whether non-experts learned the underlying systems thinking concepts according to this learning process. An experiment was conducted with 97 middle and high school students who were asked to draw a fish-tank system before and after being taught to apply the systems thinking concepts as skills for identifying elements, interactions, and roles/purposes. The results provide evidence to conclude that student learning of systems thinking significantly increased from the first drawing to the second drawing.

Systems thinking assessments in engineering: A systematic literature review

“…Another example of a scenario was Taylor, Calvo‐Amodio, and Well's Assessment, where they asked students to draw fish‐tank systems for the problem: “You recently purchased a fish tank. After two weeks, you notice the water is turning green in color” (Taylor et al, 2020, p. 10). Conversely, Hu and Shealy's Assessment A was not characterized as a scenario assessment, because while students were asked to draw concept maps on topics related to sustainability, the paper did not indicate that students were given a particular prompt to respond to (Hu & Shealy, 2018).…”

“…STAR included “intended purpose” as a systems thinking attribute in its rubric, highlighting that engineering systems are created with specific beneficiaries in mind (Lavi et al, 2020, p. 42; Lavi et al, 2021, p. 5). Taylor, Calvo‐Amodio, and Well's Assessment included identifying “roles/purposes” for each element (Taylor et al, 2020, p. 9). Grohs, Kirk, Soledad, and Knight's Assessment rubric included a section that checked if participant responses were aligned across different aspects of their response (Grohs et al, 2018).…”

Systems literacy amongst air force logisticians in Nigeria

“…There are arguably as many definitions of systems literacy as there are systems scholars. Taylor et al (2020) described the path to becoming a systems thinker as involving three levels, namely sensibility, literacy and capability. According to these researchers, an individual attains systems sensibility by being aware of systems.…”

A taxonomy of purposeful human activity system signs as a means to improving systems literacy

“…These three levels of exposure are similar to the three phases of learning systems thinking (Ison & Shelley, 2016). An application of this research was presented by Taylor, Calvo‐Amodio, and Well (2020) for developing systems thinking lessons by and for nonexpert teachers.…”