The world consists of systems on many different scales, where important phenomena arise as a result of how different components affect each other. According to educational research, systems thinking is not something that comes naturally to us. It may be more intuitive to see each component separately than to understand which phenomena may arise as a result of the dynamics of the system.
What is systems thinking?
Systems thinking is about
- recognizing dependencies and feedback loops
- analyze complex systems
- understand the meaning of different time- and length scales
- take uncertainties into account
Systems thinking in a MN-context
Systems are fundamental in many of our fields of science. Some examples are
- ecosystems
- the climate system
- energy systems
- organ systems
- management systems
A strength of our education is precisely that the students must learn to understand systems. This is not necessarily something that students or lecturers are aware of. Therefore, we can try to make it clear to the students, and point out how our analysis of a system can be transferred to many other types of systems.
Examples of teaching activities
- Draw system maps to clarify interactions and feedback between various components and processes
- Numerical simulations that illustrate and explore different states of a system
- Discuss how properties of a system can be transferred to other types of systems