DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2020.1755741

Summary
The paper presents a study aiming to identify design guidelines to implement systems thinking in upper-secondary biology education. Authors define systems thinking as “the ability to reason about biological phenomena in terms of system characteristics to create a more coherent understanding of biology as a whole.” Based on the recommendations of literature and experience, a teacher team developed, tested and evaluated two lessons in two upper-secondary biology classes using Lesson Study (LS) with the aim to triangulate the recommendations from literature and bring them into classroom practice. Lesson one focused on the application of seven system characteristics: boundary, components, interactions, input & output, feedback, dynamics, and hierarchy. Lesson two focused on the improvement of students’ understanding of the characteristics feedback and dynamics by using a qualitative modelling approach. Based on classroom observations, student products and interviews, the results suggest that most students can name and apply the seven characteristics.
Based on the findings of this study authors formulated four design guidelines that seemed effective in supporting students’ systems thinking: (1) Get students acquainted with the seven system characteristics that are related to the three systems theories; (2) (Let students) apply the system characteristics to a wide range of contexts during the school year, varying from the cellular to the biosphere level, at different times within the school year; (3) Focus on one or two system characteristics specifically to deepen and/or improve students understanding of these characteristics in relation to the others; (4) Pay attention to the use of system language and encourage students to do so.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The paper deals with systems thinking and complex systems.
Authors describe a variation of systems thinking definitions which is due to the implicit or explicit emphasis on the key concepts of one or more systems theories that systems thinking was originally derived from. For example, General Systems Theory (GST) focuess on systems hierarchical structure; Cybernetics (C) focuses on self-regulation; Dynamics Systems theories (DST) focus on. dynamic behaviour of systems (DST).
Various theoretical models are also described. The Systems Thinking Hierarchical (STH) model focuses on four levels of a sequential growth of levels of systems thinking, which include the ability to: (1) identify the system components and processes; (2) identify relationships between separate components and the ability to identify dynamic relationships between the system components; (3) understand the cyclic nature of systems and organize components and place them within a network of relationships, and make generalizations; (4) understand the hidden components of the system and the system evolution in time (prediction and retrospection). The Structure, Behaviour and Function (SBF) model represents the system components and the relations between them (structure), the dynamic interactions between the system components and existing mechanisms in the system (behaviour), and the essence of the system and its components (function). Later, the SBF model is refined into the Components-Mechanisms-Phenomena (CMP) conceptual representation which supports students to think about the components (C) of a phenomenon (P) and how they interact to result in a specific mechanism (M) of the phenomenon.
Systems thinking is generally described as ‘the ability to understand and interpret complex systems” and breaking down complex systems into structure, behaviour and function can assist students to understand complex systems.

Point of Strength
The strengths of the publication are (a) the use of Lesson Study (LS) as a research instrument. In this set-up, teachers are involved from the design to the evaluation phase which leads to ownership, but also to implementation integrity because the teachers know what they want to achieve with the lesson and with which teaching and learning activities they want to do this; (b) the close observations of case-students during the research lessons and the interviews afterwards which give in-depth insight in the learning (and thinking) progression of different types of case students.