Subject: 12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn

Posted by Ursula Frischknecht-Tobler on 12/17/2004
In Reply To:12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn Posted by Gallaher Ed on 12/16/2004

Message:

Hello,

I've been reading the discussions on the list for about a week now with great interest . I'm working at a teacher's training college in Switzerland where I realized that systems thinking is not known at all among teachers.
PISA has shown us that our schoolchildren's problem solving skills are very poor. Together with 3 other teachers trainers in science education we developped a small reseach project to find out how systems thinking develops in children from 6 to 12 years. Much of the work will be done in classrooms with examples and we'll try to find out if a transfer from environmental or social systems can be made to other problem areas (action research). Another part will be quantitative research with problem centered interviews about children's preconcepts.

For this reascon I starrted searching in literature and in the internet and found your list. My main question at the moment is of where I find quality material for classroom teaching which I could translate into German and use for our project. We will not work with computer modelling software for this initial project. Most of the material I found so far is material for modelling on the computer (except for Linda Booth Sweeney's Butterfly and Playbook and the Billbonk story). Could anyone from his/her experience provide me additional material from ecology and social systems for K-6 that I could use as initial samples for our classroom teachers which shows them which of the systems concepts and which of the dynamic properties of systems can be introduced to smaller children? I'll gladly share our results with you once they are available.

Many thanks and best wishes
Ursula Frischknecht


Ursula Frischknecht-Tobler
Profasonweg 10
CH-9476 Fontnas
Switzerland

Follow Ups:

12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn - Linda Booth Sweeney 12/17/2004 
12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn - Ursula Frischknecht-Tobler 12/18/2004
12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn - Jason Foster 1/16/2004
12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn - Lees Stuntz 1/17/2005