Disrupting Deficit Models in Education: The Construction of Systems Thinking Pedagogy in a Professional Development

• In Event: Innovations in Application of Systems Thinking in Diverse Settings

Abstract

Using social constructionism, discourse analysis, and systems theory, this study explores teachers' construction of systems thinking as a pedagogy during a professional development. The teachers considered systems thinking as a catalyst for shifting their curriculum and classroom dynamics, including how they understood their roles as teachers, their instructional goals, and the ways they could connect their classrooms to the community and the environment. This model of systems thinking pedagogy respects both teachers and students as capable academics; additionally, it privileges a professional development culture of “becoming” in which the power of the collective is a point of leverage for teachers to disrupt what can be perceived as low expectations for both their students as learners and themselves as professionals.

Authors

• Gretchen S Goode, University of Southern Mississippi

• Laurie MacGillivray, The University of Memphis