SYSTEMS
By Ed Hessler
About the author

1st child: "Systems! What is that? You mean like the bus system?"
2nd child: "She means like the system. You gotta’ know the system, or you get in trouble.
3rd child: "The horse system. You bet, and if you have a system you might win."
4th child: "I think it means Mr. Fox and Mrs. Powers. In his class there is a system, and you know it. But her class is wild. Like anything goes. She has no system."

--This collage of comments is from Mary Budd Rowe (Teaching Science as Continuous Inquiry, 1973, McGraw-Hill, p. 172). They were made by students during introductions of the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) unit "Systems and Subsystems."

Some Ways of Thinking About Systems: Definitions
"A system is any set of objects or variables among which a relationship is believed to exist. …The system concept is a device to help you selectively focus on what is interacting in the environment. It is a very powerful kind of bookkeeping device."—Mary Budd Rowe, 1974
"A system is any set of interconnected elements."—Donella H. Meadows, 1982
"A system is composed of two or more interacting parts. For instance, a pair of scissors, a human being, an anthill, an automobile, or a seesaw may be thought of as a system. A system may be distinguished from its environment—what surrounds the set of interacting parts; and it may or may not interact with its environment or with part of it."—Kenneth Boulding, Alfred Kuhn, and Lawrence Senesh, 1973
"A system is a set of parts coordinated to accomplish a set of goals."—C. W. Churchman, 1968
"A system is a group of interdependent objects that function as a whole. The four general features of systems are boundaries, components, flow of resources, and feedback."—Rodger W. Bybee, 1997
"Systems in nature are composed of subsystems, and are themselves subsystems of larger systems. … A view of a system requires understanding the whole in terms of interacting component subsystems, boundaries, inputs and outputs, feedback, and relationships."—National Research Council, 1996.
"The scientific idea of a system implies detailed attention to inputs and outputs and to interactions among the system components."—Project 2061, Benchmarks, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993.
"Scientists and students learn to define small portions for the convenience of investigation. The units of investigation can be referred to as ‘systems.’ A system is an organized group of related objects or components that form a whole. Systems can consist, for example, of organisms, machines, fundamental particles, galaxies, ideas, numbers, transportation, and education. Systems have boundaries, components, resources flow (input and output), and feedback."—National Research Council, 1996.

Student Thinking About the Systems Concept
A caveat is in order since a thorough literature search has not been conducted but it appears that there is little research on learner’s ideas about systems, both those that interfere with learning systems ideas and those that might facilitate a deeper, more connected understanding of systems.

One troublesome idea is about the properties of the components of a system and the properties of a system.. The authors of Benchmarks (Project 2061, 1993) note that "a persistent student misconception is that the properties of an assembly are the same as the properties of its parts," i.e., the whole is like the parts of which it is composed. While this idea is sometimes true, a characteristic of many systems is that they are often different than their parts, i.e., they have what are referred to as "emergent properties." One example is life, "an emergent property of the complex interaction of complex molecules." The idea of a system having properties that result from an interaction of parts is not a simple or easy idea.

The "Atlas of Science Thinking" (Project 2061, 2001) also notes that students "tend to interpret phenomena by noting the qualities of separate objects rather than by seeing the interactions between the parts." Two examples are provided. Force is often thought of as a property of bodies rather than an interaction between them. When substances burn this is often viewed as a property of the substance rather than an interaction involving the burning substance and oxygen.
Change is another difficult idea where interaction is often neglected. In heating, two systems are involved, one gaining energy and one losing energy. Students tend to think of heat as a source and the system as directional, i.e., it is one system.

Using Systems Thinking in the Minnesota Graduation Standards Areas in Science
Standards require that we ask at least several questions, at least one for each of the major areas of curriculum, instruction and assessment.. A first question might be "What is the intent of this particular standard? (or "What is it I want students to understand?")." A second question might be "What evidence will I accept that students have this understanding?" A third question might be "What kinds of learning experiences should be provided for students to attain this standard?" Roseman (1997) and Wiggins and McTighe (1998) provide some practical advice and intellectually engaging activities which allow us to discuss our beliefs, reflect on and how to decide on what standards mean as well as on curriculum and assessment design.

You are teaching to this idea—providing opportunities to learn (OTL)--when/if you have students:

--Practice identifying the parts of things and how one part connects to and affects another.
--Provide "take-apart-and-put-together" stations where a variety of familiar devices can be disassembled and reassembled with common hand tools.
--Analyze, design, assemble, and troubleshoot readily discernible systems—physical, mechanical, electrical, biological.
--Assemble a system and then evaluate how changing various components affects the system’s output, and/or observe the effects on terraria and/or aquaria and/or gardens of changing some parts of the system or adding new parts.
--Discuss what properties of a system are the same as the properties of its parts and what properties result from interactions of its parts.
--Account for feedback in systems; those that oppose change and those that encourage change.
--Do something to a system and then look for evidence of change/interaction. e.g., motion and change of direction; order or spatial arrangement; texture and consistency; size and number of parts; color, temperature and texture; odor; and sound.
--Use variables to describe systems, note a value at a first/initial observation, a value at a second/final observation, and note the change. This should include time as well as the conditions for stating the observations.
--Describe the properties of the parts of the system and those of the system.
--Describe the inputs and outputs of a system.
--State the boundary of their system and their reason(s) for choosing it.
--Identify the parts of a system and how one part connects to and affects another.
--Discuss how one thing affects another.
-- "Troubleshoot" a device or investigation. Do they identify parts and/or connections and/or account for interrelationships?
--for students to take apart and perhaps put together again with a variety of hand tools.
--Change a component in a system and then judge how changing it affects a system’s output.
--Include connections among systems, i.e., how two systems can be joined such as an automobile and a transportation system or a can/can opener and a human.
--Consider what properties of a system are the same as the properties of its parts and what properties are different, arising from the interactions of the parts.
--Make predictions about the result of changing a part or connection in a system.
--Describe feedback in systems, e.g., are there things that oppose change or encourage change in the system.
--Describe how systems adapt, e.g., market and price, politically, socially, knowledge-and-technology adaptation/
--Describe limits to systems: behavioral, social, physical.
--Describe the characteristic ways different systems function.
--Describe scientific/technological systems AND societal systems, their parts and how they interact.
-- Note sequences of change(s) over time.
--Focus on energy inputs and outputs.
--Diagram an investigation as a system with all parts labeled.
--Keep track of things as they are studied, e.g., mass, energy, objects, organisms, events and processes

On the Web
The Creative Learning Society (CLS) promotes K-12 systems dynamics education. Jay Forrester developed systems dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems dynamics is a computer-aided approach to understanding, design and policy analysis. One of the standard programs used is STELLA, a tool for qualitative modeling. The CLS web site includes a great variety of materials including how to bring systems dynamics to a school, rubrics for the use of systems dynamics in classrooms, case studies, models created by students, links to other sites, and a variety of learning materials, e.g., soda bottle water rockets. The general address is http://clexchange.org. The bottle rocket work may be found at http://clexchange.org (Look for SC1999-03SodaBottleWaterRkt under Science Materials.).
Education for a Sustainable Future (ESF) aims to provide students with the skills, vision, and knowledge to become productive citizens and contribute to a sustainable information-rich future. It does not deal with systems concepts explicitly but they are woven throughout, e.g., economics (environmental accounting), cost/benefit and economic models. In addition it includes software tools, such as the ecological footprint calculator that measures our use of nature by calculating how much land is required to produce all the resources we consume and absorb all the waste we produce. The community planner, a spatial modeling and visualization tool for community design and evaluation allows for a variety of calculations over the community. The website is http://csf.concord.org/esf/index.cfm.

Mapping the Idea of Systems
The "Atlas of Science Literacy" (Project 2061, 2001) includes a map about general notions related to systems. It also shows the connections among the learning goals found in Project 2061’s "Benchmarks for Science Literacy." The strand maps—there are currently about 50 with more to come—graphically depict how student’s understanding might grow from grades K to 12. Each map displays the ideas, skills, and the connections among them that are part of achieving literacy.
The purpose of concept maps is to represent meaningful relationships between concepts. These schematic devices help to make clear to everyone, teachers and students, "the small number of key ideas they must focus on for any specific learning task. A map can provide a kind of visual road map showing some of the pathways we may take to connect meanings…" (Novak and Gowin, 1984:15). Mr. Novak also describes how to construct a concept map in his new book (Novak, 1998: 227-228).

Re: Sources
Kenneth Boulding, Alfred Kuhn and Lawrence Senesh. 1973. System analysis and its use in the classroom. Social Science Education Consortium Publication #157, Boulder, CO.
Rodger W. Bybee. 1997. Achieving Scientific Literacy. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.
C. W. Churchman. 1968. The systems approach. Delacorte Press, New York, NY.
Aldo Leopold. 1948. Thinking like a mountain. Pp. 129-133 in A Sand Country Almanac. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Donella H. Meadows. 1982. Whole earth models & systems. The CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer: 98-108.
National Research Council. 1996. National Science Education Standards. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
Joseph D. Novak. 1998. Learning, creating and using knowledge: Concept maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Joseph D. Novak and D. Bob Gowin. 1984. Learning how to learn. Cambridge, New York, NY.
Project 2061. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1993. Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Project 2061. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2001. Atlas of Science Literacy. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Jo Ellen Roseman. 1997. Lessons from Project 2061. The Science Teacher, January:26-29.
Mary Budd Rowe. 1973. Teaching science as continuous inquiry, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. 1998. Understanding by design. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Design. Alexandria, VA.

Ed Hessler
Edward Hessler works with the Minnesota Environmental Sciences Foundation, Inc. and the Minnesota Science Teachers Association. The Minnesota Environmental Sciences Foundation, Inc. is a K-12 not-for-profit organization. Ed serves as the Executive Secretary of MnSTA, (i.e., he opens the mail of the Minnesota Science Teachers Association). He likes all the seasons (mostly), violets, spiders, prairies, bicycles but not neckties. He is trying to learn to live simply. He hopes that the ideas here are valuable enough to justify insulting a forest ecosystem.