Imagining the School of the Future Through Computational Simulations: Scenarios’ Sustainability and Agency as Keywords

Abstract

Computational simulations are fundamental tools not only for scientific research but also for education. They are frequently used as virtual laboratories to foster students’ understanding of the theoretical concepts that lie at the basis of the simulated systems. Recent research works in STEM education have started to explore the potential of simulations as future-oriented objects, to support students in the development of future scenarios for real-world situations. In this paper, we present a teaching-learning module targeted to upper high-school students on simulations of complex systems. The peculiarity of this course is that, guiding the students through the conceptual and epistemological analysis of some computational agent-based models, we were able to ground on these disciplinary bases the introduction of key concepts of the futures studies, like that of scenario. More specifically, in this paper we address an original future-oriented activity in which the students were required to choose an urgent problem of their interest, imagine possible and desirable scenarios based on a simulation and identify the sequence of actions to be undertaken to reach the preferable future. In presenting the results of the module’s implementation we focus on two groups of students who spontaneously decided to address a problem related to the current educational system. In particular, we discuss how the future-oriented activity based on simulations led the students (i) to imagine sustainable scenarios for the school of the future, in which a dynamical equilibrium between opposite tensions is achieved, without any of them being eliminated and (ii) to recognize themselves as agents of transformation in a public, professional, and personal dimension.

Agent-based perspectives on epidemiological models: analysis of interviews with upper high-school students

“…In January-February 2021 a teaching-learning module on computational simulations was implemented for the first time online with 35 upper high-school students within an optional program of university orientation of an Italian physics department. The module, described in detail in [21][22][23], comprised conferences of experts, roundtables with researchers and interactive lectures. In particular, the students were progressively guided to analyse three NetLogo agent-based simulations of complex systems that are inspired by interaction models of statistical physics [24].…”