DEXTER CHAPIN // NAIS 2012 MELINDA MUELLER PAUL NEWTON Marta Zuluaga Teaching Sustainable Systems

Our students will live well into the 21 st century; a century likely to be dominated by the three facets of sustainability: Ecology Economy Equity Teaching sustainability has to be about teaching students how to effectively intervene in complex systems to bring about change. Teaching Sustainable Systems

Basic Assumptions: “He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.” – Anwar Sadat “Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.” –Peter Senge “It is not enough to just do your best or work hard. You must know what to work on.” -W. Edwards Deming Teaching Sustainable Systems

So, what can we do? Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months*. We can help students to create or surface, and examine, modify, or correct their mental models in order to make explicit the patterns that give data meaning and construct knowledge. We do this by ST / SD modeling Teaching Sustainable Systems

Change, guidance, and help is coming to a state near you. The State of Washington has established a series of standards and programs that support the explicit teaching of Systems Thinking and infusing Sustainability across the curriculum starting in Kindergarten. Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? It has six facets: Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? 10,000 meter thinking The airplane view from 35,000 feet; you can see how things fit and flow; little or no detail but large scale structure visible. Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? System-as-cause thinking. This is the ST equivalent of Occam’s razor. It is the contents and structure of the system that generates system behavior; not exogenous elements. Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? Dynamic thinking. Dynamic thinking looks not just at an “Event” but combines events and precursors into patterns. Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? Operational thinking. Is about the nitty-gritty of the relationships, interactions, and effects of system components on each other. Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? Closed-loop Thinking solves the chicken – egg question by allowing mutual causality through feedback loops Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? Generic thinking is the recognition of repeating patterns. If complex systems are paragraphs, The sentences tend to be a series of simple, generic patterns found again and again in Nature. Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does system thinking look like? 10,000 meter thinking System-as-cause thinking Dynamic thinking Operational thinking Closed-loop Thinking Generic thinking Teaching Sustainable Systems

What does System Dynamics look Like? Systems Dynamics is about making system thinking explicit, operationalized, and testable. it puts on “paper” what we think we know about the system and makes clear our assumptions. It is here that we can test our hypothesis.

Teaching Sustainable Systems We all operate on mental models. Each represents our best hypothesis about how the world works. We simulate these models any time we make an either / or decision. All of our mental models are incomplete and possibly incorrect or incoherent However, our models are useful.

Teaching Sustainable Systems For example: Suppose we have a tree farm with 100trees that mature from seedlings in 5 years. we plant 10 seedlings and cut 10 mature trees each year. At year 5, we start planting and cutting 15 seedlings and mature trees each year. Sketch a graph of the population of mature trees over time.

Teaching Sustainable Systems

A second example: Diagram possible causes of student achievement Teaching Sustainable Systems

A possible response

Teaching Sustainable Systems Perhaps a more useful response

Both these models have the following advantage: They make our ideas explicit and they give us a starting place for discussions. The disadvantage is that they cannot be simulated. We cannot ask “what if….” questions. If we want to increase student success levels, we want to know how to get the biggest “bang for our buck.” To discover how to change the system, we need to build a model we can “run” or simulate. To do that, we need STELLA, or it’s equivalent. Teaching Sustainable Systems

Building a STELLA Model

Teaching Sustainable Systems Building a STELLA Model A STOCK is any accumulation in the system. A rough and ready definition might be anything that can be counted, measured or otherwise specified AT a moment in time.

Teaching Sustainable Systems Building a STELLA Model A flow is any rate of change in the system. A rough and ready definition might be anything that can be counted, measured or otherwise specified per unit of time.

Teaching Sustainable Systems Building a STELLA Model A converter is any element that is not a stock or a flow. It is often a constant, an external input or output, a mathematical operation, or a wide variety of functional elements.

Teaching Sustainable Systems Building a STELLA Model A Connector is just that. It shows how elements are connected. There are two types; informational and action connectors.

Teaching Sustainable Systems Building a STELLA Model

Teaching Sustainable Systems generics

So let’s look at a model of the tragedy of the commons. The first step is to choose what stock we are really interested in. I suggest that the real question is, “How much grass is left?” To generalize the model to any and all commons, instead of labeling the stock “grass”, let’s label it “resource”. Teaching Sustainable Systems

To build an SD model, we must learn to: Express change over time graphically Express a complex hypothesis Research the details of the interactions Think deeply about what they construct And be open to modifying their ideas Does this approach sound familiar? Teaching Sustainable Systems