Turning Challenges into Opportunities for Promoting Systems Thinking through Chemistry Education

Abstract

Systems thinking encompasses a set of skills for understanding, analyzing, and working with systems consisting of multiple interconnected elements and exhibiting emergent properties. Such systems are all around us, and helping students to develop such skills is central to equipping them to tackle professional and societal challenges. While the implementation of systems thinking approaches in education is increasingly widespread in disciplines such as biology, engineering, and geosciences, it is as yet not widespread in chemistry. This article aims to identify challenges in chemistry education that could be turned into opportunities for introducing concepts relevant to systems and systems thinking, so that students improve their conceptual understanding of chemistry at the same time as they develop their systems thinking skills. Suggestions and examples of possible productive pedagogical approaches are also outlined and discussed.

Faculty perspectives regarding the integration of systems thinking into chemistry education

“…Systems thinking is not currently incorporated in chemistry education to any great extent (Ho, 2019), with conventional methods being described as reductionist (Orgill et al, 2019). The chemistry education research community claim that these approaches should be updated and have described university undergraduate chemistry courses as ''a disjointed trot through a host of unrelated topics'' (Cooper, 2010).…”

Identifying Opportunities to Promote Systems Thinking in Catalysis Education

“…Ho pointed to ensemble thinking and ideality as a key challenge for ST in general chemistry education. 18 The same applies to the field of catalysis too. The derivation of the Langmuir adsorption isotherm and Langmuir−Hinshelwood (LH) rate equations are based on a number of assumptions, which are usually clearly communicated to students.…”

“…It was only in 2017 that a dedicated IUPAC project was started for this purpose . The December 2019 special edition of the Journal of Chemical Education presented the outputs of the project, where the importance of extending ST to general chemistry education was emphasized through multiple articles. ,− Other articles published elsewhere in the recent past , identified general chemistry courses as being predominantly formulated with a reductionist outlook, wherein concepts and applications are taught in a disjointed and fragmented manner. A similar approach is also applied to conventional advanced chemistry courses ranging from organic and analytical chemistry to catalysis.…”

Student-Focussed Approaches that can Enhance Understanding and Appreciation of Research in the Chemical Sciences

“…The Special Issue brought forward many examples of how systems thinking has already been implemented around the world, particularly in the sustainability and environmental chemistry subdisciplines. [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] One Australian example we wish to highlight is a study completed by Schultz and coworkers, in which secondary chemistry students created system maps to represent industrial chemical processes and evaluate the broader impact of the processes in relation to the United Nations Global Goals for Development. [41] Through teacher reflections in an action research framework, the study evaluated whether system mapping 'allowed the teacher to situate the learning of sustainability within the learning of chemistry content.'…”