DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00169<br />

Summary
Within recent history, both science research and science education have been largely reductionist in perspective. While the reductionist approach has resulted in a significant increase in our knowledge of the natural world and in great technological advances, it is not sufficient for addressing global world challenges, such as sustainability, pollution, climate change, and poverty. In this paper the members of the Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education (STICE) project, argue that for science in general, and chemistry in specific, to continue to advance and for citizens to be prepared to participate knowledgeably and democratically in science-related policy decisions, the reductionist approaches that are commonly used in chemistry research and chemistry education must be complemented with a more holistic approach. Systems thinking is such an approach. This article discusses the historical development, describes the key characteristics, and presents some skills and competencies associated with systems thinking. Our intention is to provide chemical educators with enough basic information about systems thinking that they can consider why and how such an approach might be applied in the education of both future chemists and future global citizens.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The article starts with the individuation of some limitations of reductionist approaches (e.g …. “keeps students from learning how to generalize what they have learned or how to apply knowledge and skills in new contexts […] or claim an objective view of scientific knowledge and, thus, ignore the human influence on how science is done and how scientific data is interpreted” and proceed with an historical overview of the development of the System Thinking approaches introducing some of the skills typically engaged in by systems thinkers. At the same time authors suggests that the systemic thinking approaches have not to replace the reductionistic approaches but have to be used as a complement to obtain a synergistic effect both in chemistry and chemical education

Point of Strength
It represents a good introduction in the world of the System thinking, offering a balanced presentation of the advantages of this approach over the more traditional reductionistic one.