Making Thinking Visible

Students use systems thinking tools to clarify and visually represent their understanding of complex systems.  This visual approach allows the students and others to interact with and explore thoughts, perceptions, and mental models with precision and clarity. Students use behavior-over-time graphs (BOTGs) to depict their understanding of patterns and trends.  BOTGs are visual tools that help students describe orally and in writing what and how they are thinking. Connection circles and causal loop diagrams help students describe their understanding of the connections and interdependencies of complex systems including  historical systems, scientific systems, economic systems, cultural systems, political systems, and literary systems, both fiction and nonfiction. Students for whom English is a second language have demonstrated marked improvements communicating their thinking both orally and in writing as a result of using behavior-over-time graphs, causal loop diagrams, and the other systems tools. When students make their thinking visible through the use of systems tools, teachers can immediately identify misconceptions that students may have about curricular content.

Making Connections

Systems thinking tools help students make connections between curricular areas and relevant life experiences. When students use systems thinking concepts and tools, teachers have noted an increased number of incidences of transfer from classroom lessons to students' real-life experiences. An understanding of system structures enables students to see the similarities between seemingly different systems.  For example, the understanding of how a contagious disease infects a population helps students understand how a rumor spreads or a fashion trend grows.

Solving Problems

Students of all ages learn and independently use systems thinking problem-solving strategies. Students experienced in recognizing and using systems thinking concepts and tools seek out new and varied perspectives when solving problems. Students use systems thinking vocabulary and concepts to question and challenge seemingly obvious solutions to complex problems.  For instance, students use systems thinking archetypes like Fixes that Fail and Shifting the Burden to identify and analyze both short and long-term effects of actions. Systems thinking concepts and tools help students understand their own beliefs/mental models and behaviors.  Students use BOTGs for self-assessing how behaviors and emotions change over time; ladder of inference for understanding the development of inferences; and causal loop archetypes for retelling the dynamics of particular situations.

Developing Readers and Writers

Systems thinking concepts and tools help students develop as readers and writers.  When students use the concepts and tools of systems thinking, they are better able to retell and summarize a piece of writing; analyze character, plot, setting and theme and the relationships between these literary components; identify point of view and the author's/characters' mental models; describe cause and effect relationships; express themselves descriptively.

Increasing Engagement

When using systems thinking concepts and tools, many students show increased motivation, engagement, and self-esteem. When using systems thinking tools as a prewriting strategy, students who had been producing below-average writing wrote more (quantity) and developed more thoughtful, insightful content (quality) than they had previously. When asked to "tell the story of a line" (BOTGs), "tell the story of a loop" (causal loop diagrams), or "describe a stock-flow map," many usually reluctant students were more willing to participate in front of others, using visual diagrams as they described ideas or theories.  Students in special education classes voiced satisfaction at being able to understand challenging concepts typically presented to their non-special educations peers but not to them.

Tool-Specific Findings

Behavior-over-time graphs (BOTG)

Behavior-over-time graphs (BOTGs) helped students increase their skills with the mechanics of coordinate graphing. In math, when students were given a story describing linear growth or decay, BOTGs helped them graph accurately, interpret the graph as a function, and interpret the relationship between rate and slope. BOTGs helped students accurately compare and contrast two different linear functions and to compare a linear function with an exponential function. BOTGs helped students visually describe change over time that was occurring in a system (a story, an historical period of time, a math word problem) that also helped them effectively write about their interpretation of the patterns and trends within a given system.

Causal Loop Diagrams

Causal loop diagrams helped students identify cause and effect connections and feedback relationships within systems.  For example, in music appreciation, students were able to draw connections between changes in society and the evolution of rock and roll in the United States. Causal loop diagrams and causal loop archetypes helped students apply their understanding of generic system structures and real-world situations.   Causal loop diagrams helped to increase student awareness of various factors that contribute to cause and effect relationships (e.g. the environmental and social causes and effects that characterized the Dust Bowl).

Stock-Flow Mapping

Stock-flow mapping helped students express their ideas both orally and in writing.   For example, in language arts students drew stock-flow maps to identify important accumulations (stocks) and other influencing structures when reading and analyzing literature.  In social studies students demonstrated understanding of the developmental process of an invention.   In social studies, stock-flow mapping, as a pre-writing exercise, helped students enhance the quality of their written explanation of underlying reasons for events occurring in various historical periods.

Dynamic Computer Modeling

Dynamic modeling provided students a greater ability to analyze graphs (the output of a computer model) and to look for the parts and interactions that make up a system.   Dynamic modeling positively influenced the level of student discussion as students communicated insights and perceptions that represented higher level thinking.   When using dynamic computer simulations, traditionally under-performing students nearly equaled the performance of their classmates.  Dynamic modeling helped students differentiate among the various structures that contribute to linear growth, linear decay, and nonlinear patterns of change (e.g. exponential growth).    Dynamic modeling provided students with opportunities to make predictions about how a system might change given certain conditions, and then test their predictions by running the model.

Other Visual Tools

The use of visual tools such as the ladder of inference and the iceberg were found to positively impact reading comprehension.  The tools helped students as they were asked to explain their understanding (both orally and in writing) of what they read.  This finding was supported in both language arts and social studies.   The use of visual systems thinking tools such as the ladder of inference and the iceberg were helpful as students engaged in classroom discussions.  The tools serve as organizing thinking maps that enabled students to construct and communicate their understanding of subject matter.   In social studies, the iceberg helped students understand detail, explain cause and effect, see patterns, and grasp the value and impact of historical events.

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For more information regarding action research please contact Tracy Benson.

Telephone: 520.745.4588
Fax: 520.745.5396
Email:  t.benson@watersfoundation.org

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