Summary
This paper describes a study that takes a systemic perspective for approaching high school students’ meaningful understanding of organic chemistry concepts. Specifically, the systemic assessment questions (SAQ) scheme was investigated as a strategy for capturing students’ systems thinking skills in this domain. Moreover, various types of objective assessment questions were developed and evaluated concerning their effectiveness for assessing meaningful understanding. Finally, the relationship between students’ responses on these assessment schemes was explored.
Authors report a variety of definitions of systems thinking. According to these definitions systems thinking is defined as (a) thinking systemically and paying attention to the dynamic, often nonlinear or stochastic processes of interaction among the resources and the environment within which the system operates; (b) the art and science of making reliable inferences about behavior by developing an increasingly deep understanding of underlying structure; (c) a school of thought that focuses on recognizing the interconnections between the parts of a system and then synthesizes them into a unified view of the whole; (d) an ambiguous, inconsistent, multidisciplinary amalgam of logic, methods, philosophies, and perspectives focusing on the whole, as well as the parts, to form a more complete understanding of the system.
Although it seems that there is a disagreement about what constitutes systems thinking and there are numerous conflicting models about systems thinking that need to be reconciled, most of them can best be described as methodological pluralism.
Within context, authors adopt a set of four rules or patterns of thinking that characterize all systems approaches, each of which is a special kind of relation between two elements: (a) Distinction (identity/other): draw distinctions between what is internal and what is external to the boundaries of the concept or system of concepts, (b) relationship (cause/effect): interlinking one concept to another by identifying reciprocal causes and effects, (c) system (part/whole): organize parts and wholes into alternative nested systems, and (d) perspective (subject/object): reorienting a system of concepts by determining the focal point from which observation occurs by attributing to a point in the system a view of the other objects in the system. This set of processing rules ie distinction, system, relationship, and perspective (DSRP) is considered as a mechanism for the pattern of interaction among content and context that results in concepts. In the context of the DSRP model, systems thinking is inherently related with the abilities of making distinctions, taking multiple perspectives, and creating relationships in order to organize a conceptual system of interest, namely, to analyze the system to its fundamental components/subsystems (concepts and links) and to synthesize these subsystems or components into a coherent whole (a meaningful conceptual system). By implementing this conceptualization of systems thinking for conveying insights into the structure and function of the organic chemistry system, some common baselines emerge for the two constructs of interest, i.e., meaningful understanding and systems thinking. Authors also adopt a “closed” view of systems thinking. That is, systems thinking involves a boundary of some kind. Although any real system smaller than the entire universe interacts with and is dependent on other external systems, it is often useful to conceptually isolate a single system for study. Defining the system under study, namely, specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system, provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science.
Conducting a literature review, authors found various research tools for measuring systems thinking, such as: simple system diagrams, a “think aloud” process, interviews, cognitive mapping, concept mapping, questionnaires, drawings, repertory grid, and observations, or a combination of them. Most of these studies tried to measure systems thinking mainly based on its seven operational characteristics.
To develop a coherent systems thinking assessment tool, authors used the assessment triangle framework, which includes three key elements underlying any assessment: (a) a model of student cognition and learning (a systems thinking construct); (b) a set of beliefs about the kinds of observations that will provide the evidence of students’ competencies (the SAQs scheme that are aligned with the construct); and (c) an interpretation process for making sense of the evidence (the scoring rubric that reflects adequate levels of systems thinking). Ninety-one (46 males and 45 females) 11th grade students from a public urban high school in the Athens area, enrolled in four intact core chemistry classes, participated in this study.
The results indicated that properly designed objective questions can effectively capture aspects of students’ meaningful understanding. It was also found that the SAQs can elicit systems thinking skills in the context of a formalistic systems thinking theoretical approach. Moreover, a significant relationship was observed between students’ responses on the two assessment strategies. This research provides evidence that students’ systems thinking level within a science domain is significantly related to their meaningful understanding of relative science concepts.
Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The paper deals with systems thinking. According to the authors, systems thinking includes the competencies of recognizing patterns and interrelationships and learning how to structure those interrelationships into more effective, efficient ways of thinking. Authors also consider systems thinking as a structured approach to thinking about complex issues that stimulates new and deeper insights. Moreover, it is essential to engage learners in thinking about complex systems to foster science literacy.
