“I now deeply care about the effects humans are having on the world”: cultivating ecological care and responsibility through complex systems modelling and investigations

ABSTRACT Objective Systems thinking can be counterintuitive to everyday ways of knowing. This can surface doubt around predicted patterns of emergence in complex systems data, especially as it relates to the current climate crisis and related justice-oriented solutions. Method Our study describes a four-year design-based research project in which we engaged high school biology students in complex systems modelling to understand linkages between increasing ocean temperatures and the rate and severity of disease outbreaks in sea stars. Results Our findings showed that students approached climate data with uncertainty and viewed their lives as separate from the impacts of climate change. Through iterative design work, youth used authentic data and computational tools to construct geospatial and causal-loop models of climate-related disease outbreaks that situated case studies within broader socioecological and sociotechnical contexts of historic and powered human actions. Through a speculative design lens, models were transformed from data visualization tools to mediums for storying and re-storying present and future worlds for multispecies survival in the face of the climate crisis. Conclusion Students shifted their understandings of disease outbreaks from a technical perspective to a more social and situated lens of care and responsibility for mitigating the impacts of the climate crisis on human and more-than-human communities. KEY POINTS What is already known about this topic: (1) Teachers that cover climate change often focus solely on technical and data-based aspects during instruction, such as the carbon cycle and increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, without including the social and political contexts through which the climate emergency emerged. (2) Engaging students in meaningful action and problem-solving creates positive affective outcomes and retains hope in students in the face of future climate impacts. (3) There is still more that we need to learn about how to design learning environments that cultivate hope, agency, and multispecies caring in K-12 contexts. What this topic adds: (1) We show how complex systems modelling and data visualization can cultivate multispecies caring and climate action by situating climate-related phenomena in larger socioecological and sociotechnical systems. (2) Through a speculative design lens, we show how modelling can be transformed from data visualization to storytelling and re-storying present and future worlds that centre on ecological and multispecies flourishing. Here we show a new ontological dimension of modelling practices as future and world making. (3) Our research shows how multispecies caring emerged as an action in this world, and for creating the future worlds students wanted to see; it became an affective dimension for making meaning amid the complexity and uncertainty of the climate crisis.