Teachers’ understanding of the interconnectedness of soil and climate change when developing a systems thinking concept map for teaching and learning

Abstract

Teachers play a role in promoting teaching and learning strategies to address the complexity of concepts. Systems thinking is a strategy for achieving meaningful learning. Doubt exists over the extent to which the latter has been converted into appropriate classroom practice at under-resourced rural schools in one province in South Africa. This paper reports on a research study with teachers in six primary schools who developed a systems thinking concept map for teaching and learning to help teachers understand the interconnectedness of soil and climate change. The method of evaluation of the concept maps was based on Novak and Gowin’s scoring protocol. The concept map analysis of the six illustrations by teachers yielded one excellent, one good, two poor and two fail maps. The study reveals, from the scoring and focus group interviews that the teachers in this case study struggled to understand the interconnectedness of soil and climate change. The majority of the systems thinking concept maps developed, unsuccessfully illustrated how soil can mitigate the impact of climate change. Teachers in this case study lacked confidence in their knowledge of concepts influencing the outcome of their concept maps that lacked interconnections, validating teacher ignorance about systems thinking.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• concept mapping
• environmental education
• meaningful learning
• primary school teachers
• systems thinking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.