Systems thinking of pre- and in-service science and engineering teachers

ABSTRACTSystems thinking is an important skill in science and engineering education. Our study objectives were (1) to create the basis for a systems thinking language common to both science education and engineering education, and (2) to apply this language to assess science and engineering teachers’ systems thinking. We administered two assignments to teacher teams: first, modelling the same adapted scientific text, and second, modelling a synthesis of peer-reviewed articles in science and engineering education, with teams selecting a topic from a list and summarising them. We assessed those models using a rubric for systems thinking we had developed based on our literature review of this topic. We found high interrater reliability and validated the rubric’s theoretical construct for the system aspects of function, structure and behaviour. We found differences in scores between the assignments in favour of the second assignment, for two attributes of systems thinking: ‘expected outcome/intended purpose’ ...