Designing a curriculum for the networked knowledge facet of systems thinking in secondary biology courses: a pragmatic framework

ABSTRACT

Systems thinking is a powerful concept in biology which can help students understand how the diversity of contexts in the biology curriculum all have similar underlying characteristics. However, it is not currently a common feature in secondary education as it is not part of the National Curriculum of England. Research on systems thinking has suggested that students struggle with systems thinking in secondary school biology but there is little consensus on how systems thinking can be implemented in schools. Most research focuses on developing pedagogical activities that function as stand-alone units. In this article I complement this work by suggesting that systems thinking needs to be an integrated component of the entire biology curriculum and I offer a simple framework for analysing the extent of systems thinking in curricula, assessments, and student thinking. The intention is that with the creation of pragmatic frameworks and simple pedagogy for systems thinking, the latter will become more prevalent in secondary school biology curricula.

KEYWORDS:

• Secondary education
• systems thinking
• mechanistic reasoning
• curricular design

Acknowledgments

I would like to give special thanks to those who have helped proofreading and feedback: Gwen Osbaldeston, Alex Sinclair, Lauren Edwards, Brett Kingsbury and to the kind and helpful comments left by the peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).