Summary
Authors initially present a literature review revealing that several researchers using several different tools to measure students’ systems thinking have found the difficulty of the students to deal with complex systems. Furthermore, authors mention that in this area diagrammatic tools for students’ systems thinking development and measurement, as drawings, box-and-arrows, concept maps, and systemic assessment questions, have been also explored. However, the inadequacy of existing instructional methods in helping students to understand complex system has been recognized.
Then, authors focus on research about gender differences in systems thinking. They claim that researchers usually start from presumption that male students’ abilities in science are higher than those of females. In accordance to this, it was found that females apply less meaningful learning than males, having difficulties in forming relations among concepts in science, especially in later grades of high school. Similarly, it was found that male middle school students could adopt nonlinear causal structures more effectively than females using cognitive mapping assessment of systems thinking on environmental issues. Although it was found that male students were able to include higher number of concepts and interacting connections while creating more complex concept maps than female students, females included more new concepts than males, uncovering hidden dimension of the complex system.
Based on the literature review, authors use a specific type of systemic assessment questions [SAQs], the systemic synthesis questions [SSynQs], to conduct an empirical exploratory study on both evaluation of high school students’ systems thinking in the context of an organic chemistry system and for the exploration of possible gender differences. SSynQs were scored according to the hypothesis that the systems thinking construct include four levels. In accordance with this hypothesis, a value of zero is assigned if the student does not show scientific knowledge (first level); a value of one is assigned if the student demonstrates the ability to identify the relevant concept of a selected system (this concept is unrelated with another concept, and, as such, identified as an individual part of a system - second level); a value of two is assigned if the student shows the ability to identify relation among two systems concepts (third level); finally, fourth level (cyclic thinking) is characterized by the student’s ability to recognize all concepts, relations, and sub-systems, forming a meaningful whole – a system (value 4). The study sample included 119 high school students divided into two groups, experimental (E) and control (C).
The results showed that the students who were working with SSynQs (E) could develop and understand all the aspects of proposed systems thinking construct in a more effective way, than students who were subjected to traditional instructional method (C). Additionally, the results showed that most of the C group students encountered difficulties in understanding the cyclic nature of the system, or more precisely, to organize all the necessary concepts and place them within a network of relations. Nevertheless, an interesting finding appeared in observing the gender as independent variable: The female students in the E group outperformed males from the same group, showing better ability of dynamic and cyclic systems thinking. The reason for that could be found in learning style differences.
Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The paper deals with “systems thinking” and “complex systems”
Systems thinking is considered as both the ability to deeper understand and interpret system’s characteristics and behavior and the ability to effectively structure the relations that exist in the system between components. Hence, students as systems thinkers should not only identify systems’ components, but also recognize inter-relations and multiple relations between them, explore and understand emergent properties, and analyze phenomena in a wider context.
According to the paper, the focal point in systems thinking is the term system, which generally represents complex and unified whole of parts or components, which are interrelated and interdependent. According to this, properties attributed to the system are not those of individual components, as in the system the status of one component affects the status of the other components. Authors argue that biological systems are usually complex as they are in open-ended interaction with neighboring systems, and as such can display properties as non-linearity, emergence, interdependence, multiple causes, and consequences. However they claim that closed, or even isolated systems could also be complex. For example, chemistry contains a rich diversity of such systems, as it deals with the smallest particles which join to form others. In organic chemistry there are more than 60 million organic compounds because of carbon’s atom ability to form different chains. Each compound should be considered as a concept with specific properties, which distinguish this concept from the others, and/or link selected concepts with the appropriate ones through a set of relations. Such complex networks of concepts can constitute sub-systems, which further form complex systems.
