Products

Habits of a Systems Thinker Cards & Posters
By Systems Thinking in Schools - A Waters Foundation Project

The Habits of a Systems Thinker encompass a spectrum of thinking strategies that foster problem-solving and encourage questioning. Though “habit” is defined as a usual way of doing things, the Habits of a Systems Thinker do not suggest that systems thinkers are limited by routine ways of thinking. Rather, the Habits encourage flexible thinking and appreciation of new, emerging insights and multiple perspectives. 
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Books

There are various books available for teaching critical thinking using system dynamics. Listed below are books published and written by a variety of authors and publishers. These materials have proved to be useful teaching guides to using systems thinking with students and in the classroom. 

Lessons in Mathematics: A Dynamic Approach
By Diana Fisher

Mathematics is tough-sledding for many. The difficulty is that most students fail to appreciate that mathematics is "just a language." It happens to be a very rigorous language, one with very little ambiguity associated with its symbols. It's also a very abstract one. And it's primarily the latter attribute, abstractness, which causes many students to falter. This book focuses on making the abstractness more concrete with interesting and fun lessons. It uses STELLA software's icon-based, non-abstract language to structure problems in ways that students can easily visualize. Students use the software's simulation capabilities to explore solutions to the problems. Diana's years of teaching experience ensure that her lessons are right-out-of-the-box-ready for you to use in your classroom today.
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Modeling Dynamic Systems: Lessons for a First Course
By Diana Fisher

This book provides a set of tools that enables educators at the secondary and college levels to teach a one-semester or one-year course in System Dynamics. Developed for beginning modelers, the lessons contained in this book can be used for a core curriculum or for independent study. Course materials meet National Science Education Standards (NSES) and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards and are out-of-the-box ready for use in your classroom today.
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The Systems Thinking Playbook
By Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows

The Systems Thinking Playbook enables teachers to brief, facilitate, and debrief 30 exercises for groups of 5-500. It is accompanied by a two-hour video on DVD to illustrate good practice in introducing and facilitating each of the games. The exercises are brief, 5-20 minutes for each. They illustrate basic concepts of paradigms, structure, and dynamics. Each chapter contains easy-to-follow directions for the trainer specifying the purpose, outcomes, context, resources, time, space, equipment, set-up, and ideal number of participants. Suitable for all ages.
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Thinking in Systems
By Donella Meadows Edited by Diana Wright

Meadows’ newly released manuscript, Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.
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When a Butterfly Sneezes: A Guide for Helping Kids Explore Interconnections in Our World Through Favorite Stories
By Linda Booth Sweeney

Kids face all sorts of situations throughout their lives that demand their understanding and problem-solving skills. As parents and educators, we want to help them understand why troubling things happen, and then figure out what they can do about them. One way to help our children develop such life skills is to share ideas from the field of systems thinking. This groundbreaking new book can show you how! This powerful resource will help you engage children in a fascinating and stimulating world--in an imaginative, playful, and memorable way.
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