"It's Good Because It Makes You Change": Children's and Teachers' Responses to a Systems Thinking Curriculum

• In Event: 66.086 - MTCC Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 66.086-6 - Critical Ways to Examine Systems Thinking in Teaching and Learning

Abstract

As elementary students and teachers engage in dialogue (Wegerif, 2014) to understand how system elements are interconnected, their conversations become more interactive in sharing perspectives, making distinctions, and identifying relationships among content (Cabrera & Cabrera, 2015). In this way, systems thinking serves as a foundation for interdisciplinary curriculum. This study explores children’s views when invited to think in meaningful and challenging ways in schools using this pedagogical approach. It also examines their teachers’ reactions to children’s thinking. When teachers pose questions inviting wonder and imagination, students respond with their observations of the real world’s complexity and develop agency towards initiating change. These conversations become the basis of a transformational pedagogical practice that alters the teacher-student relationship from traditional hierarchical to co-learning.

Authors

• Amy Lassiter Ardell, Chapman University

• Margaret Sauceda Curwen, Chapman University