Abstract
This chapter draws heavily upon systems thinking (Thinking in systems: a primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, 2008; When a butterfly sneezes: a guide for helping kids explore interconnections in our world through favorite stories, Pegasus Communications, Waltham, 2001) in order to help the reader explore the underlying system behind his or her chosen topic. The chapter gives an overview of systems thinking while an appendix goes into further details about systems thinking. Once the reader is introduced to systems thinking and practices diagramming systems with children’s books and his or her overall subject area and the system of his or her chosen topic, the reader is then instructed to both simplify and complexify the system in order to provide three different levels. These levels may eventually correspond to the different levels of the curricular game.
If you cut a cow in half, you don’t get two cows.
–old saying, quoted by Linda Booth Sweeney, author of When a Butterfly Sneezes, 2001
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- 1.
This is similar to the 7E model in science lesson planning (Eisenkraft 2003)—elicit, engage, explore, explain (generate possible explanations), elaborate (refine chosen explanation), evaluate (test explanation and refine based on response), and extend. It is also what the monsters do in the movie Monsters, Inc. to test their scare tactics.
- 2.
Frank White (1987) describes this paradigm shift in his book The Overview Effect .
- 3.
Maslow described a hierarchy of human needs, one needs to be met before a human can satisfy the next, in this order: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
- 4.
Systems thinkers describe feedback loops as vicious “amplifying to make something greater” or virtuous “making something less” (Sweeney 2001, p. 27); however, I think those terms can be misleading because they are laden with value judgment so I prefer escalating and de-escalating.
- 5.
There is evidence that “redlining,” unfortunately, still happens today.
- 6.
Meadows (2008) points out that “Because the poor can afford to buy only small quantities (of food, fuel, seed, fertilizer), they pay the highest prices. Because they are often unorganized and inarticulate, a disproportionately small part of government expenditure is allocated to their needs. Ideas and technologies come to them last. Disease and pollution come to them first. They are the people who have no choice but to take dangerous, low-paying jobs, whose children are not vaccinated, who live in crowded, crime-prone, disaster-prone areas” (p. 129).
- 7.
A video game example of rubberbanding (courtesy of Julia Nakhleh) occurs in Mario Kart where the further behind in the race a player is, the more powerful “power up” items he or she gets. Players in dead last are more likely to get a booster rocket that can really speed him or her up, whereas first-place players are more likely to get bananas, which can slow down your opponents if they drive over the bananas, but not by a lot.
- 8.
Spoiler alert : For example, in the novel Catching Fire , Katniss literally destroys the playing field when she fires her arrow into the force field surrounding the playing field.
- 9.
By “level,” I don’t mean reduce it to rubble; I mean create different levels of your system. Isn’t that interesting? We have a word that also means nearly its opposite (level to destroy; level to create). There are several other words like this in the English language. Some names for these include autoantonyms, contranyms, and antagonyms.
- 10.
According to the information processing theory , humans can only hold ±7 chunks of information in their working memory. Novices see all items as discrete and lack the ability to chunk or categorize items and have difficulty to pick out relevant items from irrelevant ones. The greater the ability to chunk, the more information someone can work with, i.e., greater cognitive load. This is why “chunking” items such as the alphabet (a lot of young children believe “lmno” is one letter), our phone numbers, use acronyms, etc. allows us to remember and do more. I get anxious when I have too much on my mental to-do list, even when each individual item is minor, because I feel like I am losing track of everything. Writing things down and categorizing items lessens my anxiety.
- 11.
Originally Civ leaves out slavery and religion but in later versions adds them in, thus complexifying the system.
- 12.
Leon Festinger wrote a book in 1956 titled When Prophecy Fails to explore this idea of cognitive dissonance—when reality contradicts someone’s inner world. Jean Piaget developed the ideas of assimilation, fitting the outside world into one’s internal schema (e.g., “if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail”), and accommodation, changing one’s internal schema to match outside reality.
- 13.
This then introduced a new contradiction as I did not understand why those children did not fall off the earth. I had to live with that cognitive dissonance until I developed a more accurate understanding of gravity.
- 14.
This is true of both positive and negative labeling and can blind us to what is happening in the classroom. For example, when I was a high school teacher, I had a strong student who had been plagiarizing all year long, but I did not discover it until the final research paper because I did not question her writing until it became so blatant I realized the paper was too good for even her to write it.
Suggested Reading: Nonfiction
Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
Sweeney, L. B. (2001). When a butterfly sneezes: A guide for helping kids explore interconnections in our world through favorite stories. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications.
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Fiction
The following give the reader a chance to view a system as an insider and an outsider.
Any book from the Magic School Bus series.
Atwood, M. (1998). The Handmaid’s tale. New York: Knopf Doubleday.
Lowry, L. (2002). The Giver. New York: Random House.
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Appendix: Systems Quest Worksheet
Appendix: Systems Quest Worksheet
Theme: ________________________
Deeper enduring understanding: ________________________________________
Revised essential question: ____________________________________________
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Kellinger, J.J. (2017). Behind the Game: Uncovering the Systems Underlying the Topic. In: A Guide to Designing Curricular Games. Advances in Game-Based Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42393-7_3
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