Chapter 1: Thinking Differently
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Chapter 1: Thinking Differently
“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level…”
—Albert Einstein[1]
If Einstein’s dictum is true, that problems cannot be solved by the mindset that created them, then how can teachers get students to think innovatively about problems that have been created by past and current mindsets? If teachers are not themselves taught different ways of thinking and teaching, then how can they be expected to foster thinking differently among their students? The question therefore becomes, how can teacher-educators foster generative new ways of thinking” and teaching among student students that transfer to their K-12 practice? Given the need to teach for efficiency[2] because of the No Child Left Behind Act and its high-stakes assessment,[3] is it even possible to teach for efficiency and innovation (Bransford et al., 1999)?
I believe the answer is yes, and argue that systems thinking supported by computer-based dynamic modeling and simulation provides a new mindset in the spirit of Einstein’s Dictum, and a timely innovation for teaching traditional disciplinary content. When contemporary controversies and interdisciplinary topics are analyzed from a systems perspective, the stage is set for both efficient and innovative collaborative, problem-based learning and teaching. With respect to systems, the claim is supported by over a decade of teacher-driven classroom practice of systems thinking and modeling (Scheetz & Benson, 1994; Zaraza, 1995), and the urgent need for computer-assisted, systems understanding to grasp the counterintuitive and interrelated dynamics of social, economic and environmental problems (Banathy, 1996; Capra, 2002; Dorner, 1996; Forrester, 1971; McNeill, 2000; Radzicki & Taylor, 1997; Senge, 1990). The claim with respect to controversies is supported by a decade of researcher-driven classroom use of controversies (Linn, Davis, & Bell, 2004), and the need for a principled integration of educational technology and web-based inquiry into instructional design (Bopry, 1999; Bransford et al., 1999; Dede, 1998; Jonassen, 2004; Jonassen & Land, 2000; Linn & Hsi, 2000; Pea et al., 1999; Salomon & Almog, 1998; Shear, Bell, & Linn, 2004).
Structuring inquiry around contemporary controversies benefits teachers because it addresses the limited effectiveness of pedagogy that relies on straight transmission of knowledge by using a meaningful context (CTGV, 1992) to “invite” students to use or develop their cognitive and self-regulatory skills” (Niemi, 2002). It forces teachers to think differently about pedagogy because their relationship with the learner changes from content-centered knowledge purveyor to student-centered catalyst, metacognitive role model, and co-learner (Minstrell, 2001; Mintzes, Wandersee, & Novak, 1998). Scientific controversies with social and economic ramifications enable teachers to situate science learning within its social context, and demonstrate not only that science effects everyone’s lives, but also that it is “one of the most precious possessions of humankind” (Bell, 2004, p. 236).
For students, the use of contemporary scientific controversies addresses the ennui that they exhibit towards rote learning of unproblematic material by anchoring inquiry to an “unsettled” scientific problem (Latour, 1987) with personal meaning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Students are forced to think differently about learning, not only because their relationship with their teachers changes, but also because their relationship with the subject matter changes: from assimilation of “correct” content, to connecting or changing their prior knowledge with new information in order to evaluate competing claims (Bell, 2004; Mintzes et al., 1998). It also has the virtue of prompting students to think about how knowledge is created, by revealing the inferential, contingent and provisional nature of scientific knowledge (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994). Learning content through controversies enables student to experience “how scientific understanding actually unfolds over time…and intersects with the interests of society” (Bell, 2002, p.237).
Scientific and science-based controversies direct attention to the argumentation processes by which scientists make claims supported by evidence and the warrant for it, in order to achieve consensus concerning a particular question. However, where a controversy involves a dynamic system, attention also needs to be directed to the dynamics of the processes involved, i.e., the relationships and the moment-to-moment interactions among the components. Without learning the significant interactions and how the knowledge is functionally connected, the most probable outcome is that students’ understandings will remain superficial and non-operational (diSessa, 1999).
This was demonstrated in the film, A Private Universe (Schneps & Woll, 1989). Harvard graduates were asked what causes the earth’s seasons, and their answers revealed the common misconception that seasons are caused by the changing orbital distance between the sun and the earth (Gardner, 1991; Wandersee, Minztes, & Novak, 1994). Although the students’ knowledge was correct that the distance between the earth and sun changes during the year, they also knew that winter and summer seasons occur simultaneously in the northern and southern hemispheres, and yet they still answered that seasons were caused by changes in the earth-sun distance.
Alan Kay (1995) attributed the persistence of this misconception among some of the brightest and best-educated students in America to a lack of the necessary “operational” knowledge that would have enabled them to make the connections between the significant facts that they did know. I argue that the Harvard graduates who remembered the correct “answer” were just as unlikely to have operational understanding because the conventional answer (the tilt of the earth’s axis) represents a necessary condition, but is incomplete. Conceptual change research does not support the inference that students have constructed operational understanding on the basis of their knowing one condition (Mintzes, Wandersee, & Novak, 2000; Wandersee et al., 1994; White & Gunstone, 1989). Furthermore, teaching and assessing based on such a simplistic answer may not only deflect attention away from the key dynamic processes involved, but also seriously diminish students’ incentive to learn them.
The Premise Behind the Research
When the subject of an inquiry involves a dynamic system in which behavior changes over time, a systems paradigm[4] provides the most useful framework with which to approach it. A systems paradigm functions as an advanced organizer (Ausubel, 1968) because it includes the relevant parts and their properties, the relationships among the parts (how they are connected), how the parts interact (the processes involved), the conditions upon which the interactions are contingent, and the interdependencies among the parts (the feedback or circular causal loops), which are inherent in the system, and are all needed to ensure a comprehensive framework for inquiry about the system. A systems paradigm develops both analyzing and synthesizing metacognitive skills because reasoning about dynamic systems not only requires analysis of the parts and how they stand in relationship to each other, but also synthesis of how they function together to produce systemic behaviors (Costanza, 2003). Most importantly, a systems paradigm explicitly directs attention to the deeper structures and significant processes because it focuses on how the system actually works moment-to-moment, rather than on the more readily observable surface structures and events (diSessa, 1999).
This can be illustrated by framing the question, “what explains the earth’s seasons?” as a systems inquiry.[5] The unit of analysis is the earth-sun system in which the two parts, the sun and the earth, are related to each other, respectively, as “star” and “orbiting planet.” The sun’s star status signifies the solar processes that produce energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation, which continuously flows outward in all directions. At the distance of the earth’s orbit (93 million miles from the sun), the sun’s energy flows at the rate of about 1370 watts/square meter/ second.[6] The earth’s status as a planet signifies that the amount of energy the earth accumulates is contingent on its own planetary properties. For example, if the solar energy flow interacted only with solid surfaces, then most of the energy would be re-emitted back into space, and the earth’s mean temperature would be a frosty -18 C (0 F). However, one of the properties of the earth is an atmosphere that the solar energy must flow through before reaching the surface. As it does, it interacts with different parts of the atmosphere (e.g., particles of minerals and molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide), creating a cascade of reactions before reaching the earth’s surface. The net result of all of the atmospheric interactions is retention of sufficient energy (accumulation) to raise the earth’s mean global temperature to a toasty +15 C, the well-known “greenhouse effect” from which “nearly all of the complexity of the natural world emerges.[7]
Framing the inquiry around energy flow and accumulation in relationship to key atmospheric processes, enables the contingent conditions that lead to the seasonal changes to be explored within the relevant structural relationships. It also introduces processes related to other phenomena, such as ocean warming and global climate change, which the traditional static, geometric, and phenomenologically superficial explanation ignores. A logical argument can, therefore, be made for explicitly teaching both static and dynamic concepts and principles. It can be further argued that dynamic concepts can best be taught by combining systems principles with dynamic modeling methods, because building or manipulated models and running simulations provide students hands-on opportunities to interactively design and/or test multiple hypothesis, including their own alternative conceptions. In the process, they are also building both analytical and integrative metacognitive skills.
A New Teaching Paradigm
Educational researchers have argued for decades that science teaching should be based on the structure of knowledge in each discipline, meaning the important concepts and processes by which scientific understanding is gained (Bruner, 1960; Schwab, 1978). These recommendations have yet to shift most teaching towards deeper, structural knowledge – how the important concepts are related and work together. Yet, it is this level of operational understanding that is believed to distinguish expert from novice with respect to knowledge, problem-solving capabilities, and performance (Bransford et al., 1999; Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Clement, 2000).
The traditional reductivist approach to education, with its emphasis on events rather than behavior over time, parts rather than relationships, and isolated processes instead of systems, carries the implicit expectation on the part of educators that students will figure out for themselves how everything actually works together (Hannon & Ruth, 2000). As the Harvard graduates illustrate, very bright and well-educated students do not accomplish such a synthesis on their own, even within a single discipline.
Ironically, one of the most important knowledge structures to emerge from Newtonian science was the concept of dynamic systems (Kline, 1995; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984).[8] The traditional discipline of celestial mechanics successfully represents the solar system as a deterministic dynamic system in order to calculate and predict past and future positions of its parts. However, the deterministic paradigm has been unsuccessful in understanding and predicting complex dynamic systems’ behaviors that are either stochastic or chaotic in nature, as many are in chemistry, biology, and even celestial mechanics are (e.g., the famous three-body problem). Ludwig von Bertalanffy was confronted by its limitation during his biological research early in the 20th century, which led him to the discovery that similar patterns in natural phenomena emerge from dynamic system structures in many different disciplines, including physics, biology, and social sciences (Bertalanffy, 1968).[9]
Increasing numbers of scientists find it necessary to study complex systems as wholes, in addition to their constituent parts. Should curriculum and instructional design include dynamic systems concepts, structures, and models? Various modeling approaches have already attracted interest among educational researchers (Colella, Klopfer, & Resnick, 2001; Frederiksen & White, 1998; Perkins & Grotzer, 2000) and teachers alike (Zaraza & Fisher, 1999). One reason is the development of enabling computer technologies with the capacity to compute at lightening speeds and run programs of models that create simulations of complex dynamic systems. These technologies are now available to both researchers and educators.
Statement of the Problem
Model-building and problem-based learning already support specific disciplinary learning goals. However, they have yet to realize their potential to connect the academic silos that have “fragmented the world into bits and pieces called disciplines and subdisciplines, hermetically sealed from other such disciplines [so that] after 12 or 16 or 20 years of education, most students graduate without any broad, integrated sense of the unity of things” (Orr, 1994). Interdisciplinary teaching methods are crucial because physical, biological, and social processes do not operate independently of each other, nor do they exhibit simple linear relationships in which cause and effects are always, or even usually, close in time and space (Bertalanffy, 1968; Forrester, 1971). Therefore, the primary problem that this research seeks to address is the emphasis on traditional reductivist teaching methods at the expense of synthesis. Several other problems are related, and also addressed by the pedagogic and research methodologies.
Educational research has consistently demonstrated that pedagogies based on non-problematic, static, and unanchored knowledge presentations are ultimately inefficient because these methods do not engage students in meaningful learning, successfully foster conceptual change, or prepare students for applying what they have learned in non-ideal, real world situations (Bransford et al., 1999; Brown et al., 1989; Bruer, 1993; Miller, 1956; Perkins & Salomon, 1989; Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & Anderson, 1988). The problem can be characterized as knowledge stripped of emotional impact and personal saliency.
Clearly, educators need to prepare students to be knowledgeable and skillful in particular fields, but educators also need to prepare students to solve problems and develop what has been referred to as adaptive expertise (Bransford et al., 1999; Hatano & Inagaki, 1986). This involves learning how to anticipate and avoid or minimize problems before they emerge (Perkins, 1986). Real world problems are typically embedded in complex systems, suggesting that the ability to think differently, i.e., counterintuitively and systemically, will be needed (Ackoff, 1999; Banathy, 1996; Kay, 1995; Senge, 1990; Dorner, 1996; Forrester, 1971; Senge, 1990). Most real world problems are also interdisciplinary, suggesting the ability to synthesize and integrate knowledge across domains will also be required.
Collaboration across disciplines has not been traditionally encouraged in schools for a number of practical and logical reasons, not the least of which is that different subject matter curriculum is implemented by teachers with substantively different knowledge domains and pedagogic approaches. Even when efforts have been limited to two subjects, structural, intellectual, and emotional barriers required concerted effort for collaborative teaching efforts to succeed (Wineburg & Grossman, 2000).
Similarly, researchers who work with preservice teachers have encountered different attitudes among different subject matter teachers (Sullenger et al., 2000). Some preservice teacher attitudes appear to mirror the cultural divide between the sciences and humanities observed by C. P. Snow (1959), as well as the hierarchical positioning that privileges the “hard” over the “soft” sciences lamented by J. Stephen Gould (1989). Stephen J. Kline points out that the divide between the humanities and sciences impedes progress on coming to judgment on issues that are value-laden, but are greatly benefited by scientific understanding (Kline, 1995). Hierarchical attitudes based on subject or discipline impedes collaboration and teamwork within education because of the resentment that such ranking engenders among teachers of different disciplines (Sullenger et al., 2000). Research suggests that there is a genuine need for preservice teachers to be introduced to different disciplinary world views, as well as problem-solving around collaboration, teamwork, and curriculum integration (Spalding, 2002; Sullenger et al., 2000; Wineburg & Grossman, 2000).
Lastly, there is an urgent need to understand natural systems and how human systems impact them. For the first time in the history of the planet, one species (ours) is quantitatively matching or surpassing planetary flows of materials such as lead and carbon dioxide beyond the earth’s ability to absorb them (Ayres, 1992).[10] Numerous examples of the rise and fall of past societies have been documented, and provide cause for concern based on the similarities between the actions of past societies and current behavior, with respect to environmental, population, and economic stresses and external as well as internal conflicts (Diamond, 2005; Kennedy, 1987; Tainter, 1988).
In a report published by the National Research Council, the consensus was that if human activities are not modified within two generations, irreparable damage may occur to some of the natural systems upon which we depend (NRC, 1999). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) Synthesis Report, provides a more recent consensus among 1,300 experts from 95 countries that the ongoing degradation of 15 of the 24 ecosystem services examined is increasing the “likelihood of potentially abrupt changes that will seriously affect human well-being” (such as the emergence of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of “dead zones” along the coasts, the collapse of fisheries, and shifts in regional climate).[11]
The convergence of such diverse scientific studies, and the unusual efforts by scientists to communicate the significance of their research findings beyond their own communities, indicate that we are at a turning point in our own society with respect to (now) global-encompassing problems related to population, energy, pollution, and natural resources. These problems will certainly require systems design solutions (Banathy, 1996). The project of education can make important contributions by adapting systems approaches in our own disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning and teaching communities.