Science teachers understanding of systems and systems thinking skills, and their views on implementing a systems thinking approach in the classroom

In recent years, the world has been facing many serious and complex problems such as climate change, water crisis, and health problems. More comprehensive, holistic, and interdisciplinary approaches are needed to resolve such complex and global problems. The systems thinking approach in education provides a holistic approach that focuses on the interactions and relationships among components within complex systems at different levels and includes systems thinking skills to solve these complex problems. This study aims to investigate the understanding of science teachers about a system and systems thinking skills, and their views on implementing a systems thinking approach in the classroom. The eight middle school science teachers were the participants of the study. Data was collected through online interviews and the qualitative content analysis was carried out to analyze the data. The findings revealed that teachers defined the system as a part-whole relationship; systems thinking as holistic thinking. The results showed that teachers had limited ability to think in terms of stock flows, dynamically, and in causal loops in the context of domain-general scenario-based questions and the water cycle. The teachers emphasized that the systems thinking approach should be used in education and indicated different methods and tools for teaching different subjects from the science curriculum with systems thinking. The results of the study suggest that the systems thinking and system dynamics approach can be incorporated into teacher training curricula and workshops to improve teachers' competencies on knowledge, skills, and practices.