Systems Thinking in a Second Grade Curriculum: Students Engaged to Address a Statewide Drought

Authors

Margaret Sauceda Curwen, Chapman UniversityFollow
Amy Ardell, Chapman UniversityFollow
Laurie MacGillivray, University of Memphis
Rachel Lambert, University of California, Santa Barbara

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-9-2018

Abstract

Faced with issues, such as drought and climate change, educators around the world acknowledge the need for developing students’ ability to solve problems within and across contexts. A systems thinking pedagogy, which recognizes interdependence and interconnected relationships among concrete elements and abstract concepts (Meadows, 2008; Senge et al., 2012), has potential to transform the classroom into a space of observing, theorizing, discovering, and analyzing, thus linking academic learning to the real world. In a qualitative case study in one school located in a major metropolitan area in California, USA teachers and their 7- and 8-year-old students used systems thinking in an interdisciplinary project-based curriculum. Through reflection and investigations, students devised solutions and used innovative approaches to publicly engage peers and family members in taking action to address an environmental crisis.

Comments

This article was originally published in Frontiers in Education, volume 3, in 2018. DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2018.00090

Recommended Citation

Curwen, M. S., Ardell, A., MacGillivray, L., & Lambert, R. (2018). Systems thinking in a second grade curriculum: Students engaged to address a statewide drought. Frontiers in Education, 3:90. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2018.00090

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.