Identifying, Rating, and Categorizing Elements of Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education

Abstract

The chemistry education community has made considerable progress developing a foundation for chemistry educators to begin infusing a systems thinking approach into their course design. As researchers and practitioners seek to explore possibilities from systems thinking in chemistry education, an understanding of the range of strategies and motivations is needed. Herein, we report on a four-stage process for identifying and classifying elements of systems thinking in chemistry education. First: A systematic review of the literature on systems thinking in chemistry education was used to identify systems thinking elements in peer-reviewed published works. Second: We thematically clustered these elements. This resulted in three categories based on what system thinking techniques are being taught, how they are being taught, and why they are being taught. Third: We collected questionnaire responses from published scholars on systems thinking in chemistry education to assess how scholars rate the requirement of the elements. Fourth: We asked questionnaire participants to categorize the systems thinking elements using the framework that emerged from our thematic clustering. We found that 90% of participants agreed that 14 of the 34 elements are required for the effective implementation of a systems thinking approach in chemistry education. Notably, participants did not report a clear delineation between the “what”, “how”, and “why” for some elements. Together, the findings in this manuscript highlight areas of agreement and uncertainty for the implementation of systems thinking in chemistry education.