The Mystery Method Reconsidered—A Tool for Assessing Systems Thinking in Education for Sustainable Development

Influence diagrams, derived from the mystery method as its learning output, represent an externalization of systems thinking and are, therefore, valid to research; so far they have not been conceptualized in the research literature for teaching systems thinking in education for sustainable developme...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducation sciences Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 260 - 274
Main Authors Benninghaus, Jens Christian, Mühling, Andreas, Kremer, Kerstin, Sprenger, Sandra
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.12.2019
Subjects
Climate change
Cognitive Mapping
Cognitive Structures
Concept Mapping
Data Analysis
data mining
Decision making
education for sustainable development
Educational Practices
Evaluation Methods
Experts
Information Retrieval
Knowledge
mapping
Methods
Mysteries
Science education
Scoring
Students
Sustainability
Sustainable Development
Systems Approach
systems thinking
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Visual Aids
New York
United States > US
Germany
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Summary:Influence diagrams, derived from the mystery method as its learning output, represent an externalization of systems thinking and are, therefore, valid to research; so far they have not been conceptualized in the research literature for teaching systems thinking in education for sustainable development. In this study, 31 of those diagrams are confronted with (1) three different expert references, in (2) two different ways, by (3) three different scoring systems to determine which evaluation option is both valid and easy to implement. As a benchmark, the diagrams’ diameters are used, which allows statements about the quality of the maps/diagrams in general. The results show that, depending on the combination of variables that play a role in the evaluation (1, 2, 3), the quality of the influence diagram becomes measurable. However, strong differences appear in the various evaluation schemes, which can be explained by each variable’s peculiarities. Overall, the tested methodology is effective, but will need to be sharpened in the future. The results also offer starting points for future research to further deepen the path taken here.
ISSN:2227-7102
2227-7102
DOI:10.3390/educsci9040260