Curricular Innovation: Summary of Activities | Ladder of Engagement | Illustrations

Curricular Innovation

Summarizing a Broad Spectrum of Activities

Introduction: MIT’s Jay Forrester, inventor of System Dynamics, strongly advocates incorporating the tools of system dynamics into K-16 curricula [ link to paper]. The late Barry Richmond shared those views of system dynamics as a foundation for bolstering students’ capacity and motivation, as citizens, to address complex real world problems that confront them [ link to presentation]. In response to these challenges, we have, over the years, produced a large body of curricular and training materials. These vary in topic, time commitment, and skill level or tools required. All, however, share a common pedagogy:

• They are “interdisciplinary.”
• They require active and collaborative student engagement in the solution of “real world problems.” Such solutions are based on a foundation of content knowledge and dynamic understanding of the system in question. and
• They employ “generic” building blocks that encourage and enhance students’ capacity to apply their understanding to other problems.

We emphasize using the tools of system dynamics to address real world “systemic” problems since, as Forrester has written, these problems largely fall outside the domain of traditional disciplinary education. These tools allow us to:

• Better understand that these problems are typically interdisciplinary in nature;
• Recognize that
• cause and effect are rarely closely related in time and space;
• maximizing short term goals leads to longer term undesirable consequences;
• policies too often generate little or no leverage;
• cause is too often perceived as exogenous rather than internally generated; and
• eroding goals are common.

Problem Statement: Active learning that utilizes and supports the development of higher level analytical and communication skills is an aspiration (often unfulfilled) of many educational reform and improvement efforts. The fundamental principles of system dynamics [see About System Dynamics] promise to support such efforts. Can we learn to develop and apply these mind-sets and tool-sets to enhance the learning and engagement of students? Can we use these mind-sets and tool-sets to help these students develop the capacity and motivation to be effectively involved in these real-world challenges?

Approach: Over the past fifteen years, we have collaborated in developing a variety of curricular and training materials and approaches (see grid, below). All these materials utilize our Ladder of Engagement structure:

• They acknowledge and utilize “content knowledge” to describe the dynamics of change: What do we know and what do we need to know about any given subject in order to define its dynamic behavior(s)?
• We then organize that knowledge, using system dynamics tools to identify and define structure and feedbacks, to more fully understand what controls those behaviors?
• Finally, we provide opportunities for students to use those insights to become empowered and actively engaged in designing, testing, and applying intervention strategies with which to influence or change that behavior.

Curricular Innovation: Summary of Activities | Ladder of Engagement | Illustrations

Curricular Application of Our Ladder of Engagement

KNOWLEDGE

What do we know about the “behavior(s)” of the system?

At the foundation of all of our curricular and training materials is a “content” or “knowledge” component, typically expressed in the context of a “problem” or “issue” of interest or importance. Effective engagement with a given problem requires acquiring and organizing explicit content knowledge. For any issue that we explore, the tools of system dynamics:

• Clarify and define the problem by organizing existing knowledge with Behavior Over Time Graphs. What has the behavior of the system been? What might the behavior be in the future?
• Structure that knowledge into stock & flow maps, as a common language with which to identify the precise pathways by which dynamic change occurs.

UNDERSTANDING

What “drives” the behavior of the system?

Our curricular materials develop “understanding” by explicitly developing a deep understanding of the feedbacks that control the dynamics of these real world systems. For this purpose we use Stock & Flow (or less often, “Causal Loop”) Feedback Maps and Computer Simulation Models. We begin with relatively simple “generic” visual structures, as the foundation for “systemic thinking,” and progress, where appropriate, to develop more complex computer models that permit rich exploration and experimentation.

INFLUENCE

Can this understanding be used to design and evaluate policies to better manage the system?

In 2002 Barry Richmond described a “systems citizen,” to convey an idealized student who, upon graduation from high school, possessed both the skills of system dynamics AND the motivation to exercise those skills in a socially responsible and productive fashion [ link to presentation]. Barry’s term resonates strongly with us and, as we explained in a 2004 Keynote Address to the same gathering, resonates at the core of our curricular experimentation.

Our curricular and training materials provide students with opportunities to explore (and in many cases, simulate) systemic behaviors of “real world” problems and issues, with the explicit goal of using system dynamics:

• To empower them to become actively engaged in their own learning,
• To address “real world” problems and issues of interest and import, and, most importantly
• To do so with a goal of being collaboratively engaged with a larger community in fostering positive change.

As we continue to progress in our thinking, we are anxious to provide students with opportunities to share their learning with larger communities and the world around them. We support them in developing their capacity to design effective interventions and the subsequent influence they can wield in the community through effective communication and advocacy. Able and motivated “systems citizens” emerge from the educational process we are exploring with the tools of system dynamics.

Curricular Innovation: Summary of Activities | Ladder of Engagement | Illustrations

Illustrations of Our Curricular and Training Materials

Below is a sample of the curricular materials we have developed over the years. The material ranges from ambitious “program design,” to individual courses built on a foundation of system dynamics, to the individual modules that constitute specific units of a course that may or may not be organized with a system dynamics framework.

These materials were each designed for a specific educational level (e.g. middle-school or graduate level in-service teachers); one exciting and gratifying discovery over the years has been that many of these units can be productively utilized more broadly than we had anticipated. For instance the Easter Island module, was designed for a college course in Sustainable Development but has been used comfortably and valuably with middle school social studies classes.

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Programs of Instruction: These are multi-course programs, one of which is described in greater depth in this site’s “Training” section.  Both support the growth of system dynamics competence and utility through a sequence of courses that provide a basic foundation in systems thinking and an introduction to the full tool-set of the discipline; provide training in computer modeling; utilize case-studies to provide hands-on experience; and culminate in an independent project of relevance to the individual participant.

• Undergraduate Minor in System Dynamics:  This was a program for Trinity College of Vermont with which we are no longer affiliated.  It was essentially a six-course undergraduate analog of the Graduate Certificate described below.  Its content included the following courses:
• Introduction to Systems Thinking and Systems Tools
• Introduction to Computer Modeling
• 3 interdisciplinary, content-rich courses which utilized system dynamics, e.g.
• Plagues and People
• Population Growth and the Human Experience
• Structures of Revolution
• Sustainable Development
• Independent Study project of the student’s choosing

• Graduate Certificate in System Dynamics for Educators

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Courses: These were typically developed for and offered to an undergraduate audience. They develop a single, often interdisciplinary, theme providing a chance to develop students’ capacities to utilize the tools of systems thinking and system dynamics, as they work carefully through challenges of knowledge, understanding, and influence. The courses listed below have descriptive materials available for sharing from this site. We have been responsible for other courses as well and will share materials for those, as soon as we can put them in a form “ready for prime time.”

• Biology and History of Smallpox:This is an offshoot of an earlier course, “Plagues and People,” in which we explored the impact of a diversity of diseases in human history. The ‘smallpox’ course was commissioned by the NSF-Supported CC-SUSTAIN project of the Portland, OR Public Schools.  It consists of 10 case-studies that focus on various interactions of the biology of smallpox and its historical significance in a variety of contexts up to the modern concern for its bioterrorism potential [ ISDC paper]. “A General Introduction to the Epidemic Spread of Disease” (below) is the first module in that course.
• Sustainable Development:Developed first as an interdisciplinary, undergraduate course, it has also been taught to a tremendously exciting “mixed” audience of middle- and high-school teachers (for graduate credit), AP-level high-school students (for undergraduate credit); and community members (for enrichment). Many of its component modules have been easily and productively utilized in middle-school geography and high- school social studies instruction. [ ISDC paper]. “Easter Island” (below) was the first module in that course, the unit described below was adapted for use in the pre-college environment of the Vermont Commons School

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Individual Course Modules: At its most powerful, systems thinking and system dynamics provides a tool set to support students in exploring interdisciplinary topics and with an engagement that is rare in more traditional approaches to teaching and learning.  The modules listed below exemplify that orientation. There are also valuable applications of these tools in more traditionally bounded disciplinary topics. Feel free to contact us if you have question about such possibilities.

• Easter Island: This is the first module in our Sustainable Development course (above), although it has been used productively outside that context. It is designed to do several things:
• Provide an introduction to the basic tool-set of system dynamics (Behavior Over Time Graphs, Causal-Loop Diagrams, Stock & Flow Concept Maps, and Computer Simulation) and the logical sequence of our Ladder of Engagement;
• Introduce a generic mental framework to sustainability issues that develops interacting sectors of “population,” “resources,” and “attitudes”; and
• Explores the very real historical scenario of the Polynesian colonization of and subsequent societal collapse on Easter Island.
• A General Introduction to the Epidemic Spread of Disease: This is the first module of the Biology and History of Smallpox course (above). It begins with a physical simulation of the spread of a contagious disease, then moves into the use of systems’ tools to better understand the mechanism of contagion, and culminates with a computer simulation that supports exploration of a variety of policies that can affect the pace and extent of disease spread.