Teaching systems thinking to 4th and 5th graders using Environmental Dashboard display technology

Tackling complex environmental challenges requires the capacity to understand how relationships and interactions between parts result in dynamic behavior of whole systems. There has been convincing research that these "systems thinking" skills can be learned. However, there is little resea...

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Published inPloS one Vol. 12; no. 4; p. e0176322
Main Authors Clark, Shane, Petersen, John E, Frantz, Cindy M, Roose, Deborah, Ginn, Joel, Rosenberg Daneri, Daniel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 27.04.2017
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Adults
Biology and Life Sciences
Child
Children
Communities
Critical thinking
Curricula
Decision making
Display devices
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Electricity
Environment
Environmental conditions
Environmental education
Environmental impact
Environmental studies
Feedback
Female
Humans
Laboratories
Learning
Male
Pedagogy
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Psychology
Quality
Research and Analysis Methods
Science education
Skills
Social Sciences
Students
Systems Analysis
Teaching
Teaching methods
Technology
Thinking
User-Computer Interface
New York
Ohio
United Kingdom > UK
United States > US
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Summary:Tackling complex environmental challenges requires the capacity to understand how relationships and interactions between parts result in dynamic behavior of whole systems. There has been convincing research that these "systems thinking" skills can be learned. However, there is little research on methods for teaching these skills to children or assessing their impact. The Environmental Dashboard is a technology that uses "sociotechnical" feedback-information feedback designed to affect thought and behavior. Environmental Dashboard (ED) combines real-time information on community resource use with images and words that reflect pro-environmental actions of community members. Prior research indicates that ED supports the development of systems thinking in adults. To assess its impact on children, the technology was installed in a primary school and children were passively exposed to ED displays. This resulted in no measurable impact on systems thinking skills. The next stage of this research examined the impact of actively integrating ED into lessons on electricity in 4th and 5th grade. This active integration enhanced both content-related systems thinking skills and content retention.
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Competing Interests: John Petersen was a founding partner and currently serves on as a board member of the company "Lucid™" (www.luciddesigngroup.com) which functioned as a partner and contractor on the Great Lakes Protection Fund grant that supported this project. The graphical interfaces "Building Dashboard®" and "Citywide Dashboard" used in the experiment were developed in association with Lucid. Dr. Petersen does not receive payment or royalties for his participation in research on the efficacy of the technology. His relationship with Lucid does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Conceptualization: SC JEP CMF DR DRD.Data curation: SC CMF JG.Formal analysis: SC JEP CMF JG DRD.Funding acquisition: JEP CMF.Investigation: SC JEP CMF DR DRD.Methodology: SC JEP CMF DR JG DRD.Project administration: SC JEP CMF DRD.Supervision: SC JEP CMF DRD.Writing – original draft: SC JEP.Writing – review & editing: SC JEP CMF DR JG DRD.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0176322