Tom Bielik

Global challenges such as ocean acidification can be understood as complex systems involving interconnected causes, effects and relationships. To navigate this complexity, systems thinking (ST) is considered an essential competency that can be fostered through science education. However, empirically tested teaching materials for fostering ST in chemistry education remain scarce. We developed and evaluated a task on ocean acidification based on the ChEMIST table. The task includes subtasks on observation, explanation, modelling, prediction and reflection, including the construction and revision of causal maps on coral decline. The task was piloted with upper secondary students ( n = 10) and implemented in a main study ( n = 16) using semi-structured interviews. Responses were analysed by subtask, with focus on assessing granularity, complexity and causality of the causal maps. The findings are presented along five ChEMIST characteristics. Findings show that students demonstrated more analytical aspects of ST when identifying elements and direct causal links. More holistic aspects of ST emerged in prediction and reflection subtasks, where students connected ecological, societal and human dimensions of ocean acidification and considered future developments and their own role within the system. Implications include the need for explicit representational scaffolds and prompts that target feedback and cross-level integration.

An understanding of ecosystems is important to enable biology teachers to teach ecological topics in their lessons. This exploratory study examines the systems thinking of pre-service biology teachers in the context of the forest ecosystem. In addition, the extent of their environmental awareness was determined (cognitive, conative, and affective components), as well as the correlations between these two constructs calculated. The 51 participants were recruited in biology education seminars (convenience sampling). They each created a concept map about the influence of climate change on the forest ecosystem and filled out a questionnaire about environmental awareness. Concept maps were analyzed to determine complexity based on the Components-Mechanisms-Phenomena framework and structural attributes (e.g., number of concepts), resulting in eleven systems thinking indicators in total. Results show that some indicators pointed to a rather high and others to a rather low level of systems thinking. On average, the participants were environmentally aware, whereby their conative environmental awareness was lower than their affective and cognitive awareness. Correlation analyses showed statistically significant positive correlations between the structural attributes and the participants’ environmental awareness. The correlations between the complexity attributes and the participants’ environmental awareness were statistically significantly positive in some cases. Hence, it becomes clear that systems thinking is not only associated with cognitive aspects, but also with conative and affective aspects of environmental awareness. Future research should aim to provide reasons for these relationships (e.g., using case studies or experimental designs) and examine whether our findings also apply to other contexts.

Many students possess a stereotypical conception of scientists (only) doing experiments in a laboratory. There is consensus in science education literature that this conception is incomplete and inadequate. Adequate conceptions of scientists and their work are important in students’ learning and career choices. However, what can be defined as an adequate conception in this regard remains unclear. This study aims to provide insight into biologists’ self-reported activities and their work locations to generate a basis for further research. 94 biologists with various positions and from a range of biological research areas answered an online questionnaire. The biologists were asked to describe three of their main scientific activities and the corresponding work locations in detail. A category system was established, which includes eight activities (‘Investigative and Artistic’, ‘Teaching’, ‘Realistic’, ‘Publishing and Reviewing’, ‘Enterprising’, ‘Conventional’, ‘Networking’, ‘Learning’) and 14 locations, which were subsumed under three main locations (‘In the Research Institute’, ‘In the Field’, ‘Remote Workspaces’). The variety of activities and locations reported by the biologists is much broader than the stereotypical image of scientific work that students typically have.

In science education, epistemic vigilance plays a key role in the development of students' critical thinking by supporting students' abilities to evaluate the expertise level of the source and to evaluate the claim itself, using rigorous scientific standards and appropriate argumentation heuristics. Based on previous studies, which suggested two aspects of epistemic vigilance—reflecting the source of information and the claim that is made—we developed the Extended Epistemic Vigilance Framework (EEVF) that includes an additional aspect of evaluating the receiver. In an empirical exploratory pilot study, we evaluated the reliability and validity of an EEVF‐based category system and investigated to what extent the EEVF can be used to characterize changes in biology graduate students' epistemic vigilance after participating in a critical thinking course. Results show that the EEVF‐based category system includes reliable and valid categories for identifying students' epistemic vigilance. A statistically significant increase with a small effect size was found in students' epistemic vigilance regarding the reliability of the source and the references used to support the claim following their participation in the critical thinking course. However, a statistically significant decrease with a small effect size was found regarding the awareness of the aspects of the one‐sidedness of the claim, the context of the claim, and cognitive biases and socioemotional influences on the receiver. In general, these findings indicate that the EEVF offers an improved framework to analyze students' epistemic vigilance more comprehensively.

Definitions of modeling competence in science education do not yet include noncognitive factors. However, noncognitive factors are central to competence and might thus substantially improve our understanding of modeling competence. In this article, we analyze volition during preservice science teachers' engagement with a black‐box modeling task and its relation to established aspects of modeling competence: metamodeling knowledge, modeling process, and modeling product. A cluster analysis of the occurrence of volition categories resulted in three clusters of volitional behavior. The clusters describe three different volition types: one action‐oriented type applying a self‐regulative strategy and two state‐oriented types applying self‐controlling strategies. Correlation analyses between clusters, volition categories and modeling process variables indicate benefits of the self‐regulative strategy.

Editorial: Investigating complex phenomena: bridging between systems thinking and modeling in science education