Systemic Thinking approach as a methodology for a quality Education for Sustainable Development

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Critical pedagogy for sustainable education

Proposal

In September (2015) world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim of the 17 SDGs is to secure a sustainable, peaceful, prosperous and equitable life on earth for everyone now and in the future (UNESCO, 2017). Unfortunately, our current collective pool of human knowledge, skills, and experience does not contain the solutions to all the contemporary global environmental, social, and economical problems (UNESCO, 2012)
Education for Sustainable Development focus in comprehend the multidimensional aspects, working individually and collectively toward solutions of current global challenges and the prevention of new ones, towards creating a new vision of how things should be.
Nevertheless, understand the intricacy of these challenges requires an approach that provide the answer how to deal with inherent complexity (Bollmann-Zuberbühler, et., al. 2014). Systemic thinking provides the synergistic analytic skills/competences required by the learners to face these global challenges.
Define Systemic thinking as the “Ability to describe complex parts of the reality as a system, to reconstruct and to model it and to be able to give explanations on the base of that model, to generate outlook as well as options to act, and to be able to judge and to realize” allows us to use this approach as a methodology of eight steps to understand the complexity of a subject.
The eight step can be describe as: 1) identify the key element of a system, 2) reconstruct the structure of the system, 3) breakdown the structure of the system, 4) advantages and disadvantage of the system, 5) the conditions of the system, 6) what could the key element of the system do different?, 7) what is our role in this system? And 8) What is your responsibility in this system? What should change?
In each step there are different supporting learning methods that helps to understand the complexity of the topic we use. Some examples of these methods include debates, structural drawing, back to back sitting and describing, mapping technique, etc.
This methodology has been used in Education as well to develop material in the ESD context; one example of how Systemic thinking work as a methodology is the material developed by Thomas Hoffman, which integrate the eight steps using as the connecting thread the cashew. This material explores the different dimension of the Cashew in a nonlinear system, organized in different modules, allowing the learners comprehend the complex dimensions behind the Cashew in four different contexts (Germany, India, Mexico and South Africa).
Systemic thinking as a methodology for ESD will improve the quality in Education not only in the local context but globally, giving the teachers and the learners the elements to comprehend the complexity of the current global challenges in the way that they can act as the change-makers with the proper set of competencies and skill needed.

Author

• WEndy Quetzal Morel Schramm, ESD Expert Net / Humboldt University