Abstract for: Assessing the Effectiveness of Systems Thinking Interventions in the Classroom

This paper presents an analysis of systems thinking interventions in educational settings. Although these interventions have been implemented in K-12 classrooms since the mid 1980s, there is still no clear definition of systems thinking or identification of the best method to test the effectiveness of interventions or methods for teaching systems thinking The goal of this paper is to answer the question: how can we best assess the effectiveness of systems thinking interventions in education? This question begs three sub questions: (1) what is systems thinking, (2) what systems thinking interventions are being used in education, and (3) how have the effect of interventions been measured? The purpose of answering these questions was to propose methods for assessing systems thinking interventions. The analysis of systems thinking interventions in the classroom yielded an initial set of guidelines for measuring and raising a person’s level of systems thinking.