Assessing teachers’ systems thinking skills during a professional development program in Turkey

Abstract

Through effective professional development in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), teachers can help students gain knowledge, skills, and dispositions to build and support sustainable communities. This paper shares how a university in Turkey developed, implemented, and evaluated an ESD professional development program (PDP) for in-service teachers. The evaluation focused on how the program enhanced participants' awareness of thinking in systems. Thirty-nine teachers from different parts of the country participated. The PDP took place over eight months and was launched by a five-day summer workshop that included presentations, hands-on activities, and field trips. The theme of energy was used throughout the workshop to emphasize how the environment, society, and economy are connected and interdependent. Teachers' systems thinking skills were analyzed through a pre-and post-workshop questionnaire and concept maps. Results of the questionnaire showed statistically significant differences between teachers' systems thinking scale scores before and after the workshop. Concept map analysis, however, identified that participants need more support relating concepts such as social justice to the environment and economy.

Changes in Pre-Service Teachers’ Values, Sense of Agency, Motivation and Consumption Practices: A Case Study of an Education for Sustainability Course

“…This work begins by building an increased awareness and knowledge of how daily actions and purchasing decisions have broader systemic impacts. However, most educators are not prepared when it comes to sustainability, and typically are not required to take course in EfS as part of their teacher education program [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

Impact of early childhood education settings on the systems thinking skills of preschool children through the lens of Bronfenbrenner's theory

“…Participants provided responses to the items on a 5‐point Likert‐type scale ranging from “never” to “most of the time”. The Turkish version of the instrument was first utilized by Ateskan and Lane (2018) after it had been reviewed by a group of experts to check for bias and ambiguity and then piloted. In this study, a Cronbach's alpha reliability check resulted in a pretest score of 0.811 and a posttest score of 0.886 ( N = 39).…”

Sorotan literatur bersistematik terhadap kompetensi guru menerapkan konsep pendidikan untuk pembangunan lestari dalam pengajaran

“…Kompetensi kelestarian spesifik adalah kompetensi yang perlu dimiliki guru bagi membolehkan penerapan pengajaran ESD dilakukan dengan berkesan. Antara kompetensi kelestarian yang amat penting dan diperlukan guru ialah pemikiran sistemik (Anđić, 2020;Anđić & Šuperina, 2021;Ateskan & Lane, 2017;Barth et al, 2007;Brandt et al, 2019;Bürgener & Barth, 2017;Cebrián et al, 2019;Cebrián & Junyent, 2015;de Haan, 2010;Karaarslan & Teksöz, 2016;Ofei-Manu & Didham, 2018;Rauch & Steiner, 2013;Rieckmann, 2012;Rosenkränzer et al, 2017;Vare et al, 2019;Varga et al, 2007). Pemikiran sistemik adalah kemampuan guru menganalisis sesuatu fenomena ataupun konflik kelestarian yang berlaku secara holistik sebagai satu sistem menyeluruh yang kompleks (Rosenkränzer et al, 2017).…”

“…Pemikiran sistemik adalah kemampuan guru menganalisis sesuatu fenomena ataupun konflik kelestarian yang berlaku secara holistik sebagai satu sistem menyeluruh yang kompleks (Rosenkränzer et al, 2017). Guru perlu mendedahkan kekompleksan hubungan kesemua dimensi pembangunan lestari kepada pelajar dan menggalakkan pelajar menilai kekompleksan konflik kelestarian yang berlaku di sekeliling mereka (Ateskan & Lane, 2017;Schuler et al, 2017).…”