AUTHOR=Curwen Margaret Sauceda , Ardell Amy , MacGillivray Laurie , Lambert Rachel TITLE=Systems Thinking in a Second Grade Curriculum: Students Engaged to Address a Statewide Drought JOURNAL=Frontiers in Education VOLUME=3 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2018.00090 DOI=10.3389/feduc.2018.00090 ISSN=2504-284X ABSTRACT=

Faced with issues, such as drought and climate change, educators around the world acknowledge the need for developing students' ability to solve problems within and across contexts. A systems thinking pedagogy, which recognizes interdependence and interconnected relationships among concrete elements and abstract concepts (Meadows, 2008; Senge et al., 2012), has potential to transform the classroom into a space of observing, theorizing, discovering, and analyzing, thus linking academic learning to the real world. In a qualitative case study in one school located in a major metropolitan area in California, USA teachers and their 7- and 8-year-old students used systems thinking in an interdisciplinary project-based curriculum. Through reflection and investigations, students devised solutions and used innovative approaches to publicly engage peers and family members in taking action to address an environmental crisis.