Abstract for:Systems Thinking in Education in Turkey - First 5 Years

Positive effects of elective courses on Systems Dynamics and Systems Thinking in Ege University Medical Faculty on students’ perspective and PISA results showing insufficiency in abstract thinking has encouraged the design of a project aiming to increase the capacity of teachers to deliver students’ academic and lifetime benefits by developing questioning, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, decision making and problem solving skills.

Systems Thinking, a good candidate for improving abstract thinking by visualizing behaviour and structure of systems, is being gradually adapted to kindergarten and primary school programs of participating schools in Turkey for last 5 years.

A yearly routine of introductory training, followed by implementations supported by volunteer facilitators and, sharing results in a symposium and on a web site is established. After two years of implementation and sharing, a volunteer teacher has the opportunity to become a volunteer facilitator.

By this way, we were able to disseminate systems thinking in two dimensions: increasing number of teachers on same grade level and, incorporating teachers from new grade levels. We develop content for a new grade level through collaborations with different organizations including universities and NGO’s.

We want to share our experience and get opinions and suggestions.