How do children form ideas about their environment? Are they able to think in terms of systems? Researchers from Queen's University Belfast worked with children of various ages to develop a new method for checking out such questions. Based on problem-solving through pictures, this method cast new light on the extent of children's system-thinking skills. It emerged that both younger and older children can and do apply systems thinking to the business of solving environmental problems. This insight is an important key to developing appropriate materials and approaches for environmental education.

Today's children will be tomorrow's decision makers. It is important that they learn the skills necessary to deal with tomorrow's environmental problems. Environments are systems, hence effective environmental education will need to hinge developing systems thinking. There is almost no empirical literature on the child's concept of a system. This lack may arise because talk about systems requires advanced verbal skills. It has been widely assumed that children's vocabularies do not approach this level of sophistication until early adolescence.

The researchers found it possible to developed a technique that allowed them to study the complexity of children's non-verbal concepts of environmental systems. Pictures and computer simulations of environmental problem situations were used to minimise demands on children's language skills. This technique then formed the basis for a series of trials involving children of different ages in several European countries. It emerged that:

• Environmental teaching often fails to introduce environmental concepts in a clear and organised way. Many environmental terms are likely to be unfamiliar to children.
• Both older and younger children can readily suggest remedies to environmental problems. They also tend to offer solutions that emphasise the importance of processes rather than resources.
• Younger children tend to see fewer negative outcomes arising from an intervention to improve the environment. This is presumably because they do not consider all of the consequences of an intervention.
• Younger children sometimes offer more complex solutions to environmental problems than older children. This is possibly because they tend to believe that complex solutions are always better than simple ones.
• Younger children propose solutions that involve making processes larger. Older children thought that making things smaller would be better.

The outcome of the study contains important lessons for environmental education. Unlike many other studies in this area, it reveals how (rather than what) children think about the environment. Wider policy implications of the research include signs that:

• Environmental education in primary schools would benefit from better understanding of children's systems thinking. It could enable children both to understand the natural environment and be helped to develop their systems thinking skills.
• The systems framework applied during the Belfast study can be used to assess the ways children think about the environment. It can also be used to describe the complexity of children's thinking at different stages and to structure curriculum and associated materials.

The study report concludes that similar action-based approaches to learning about and solving environmental problems should be worth pursuing in other contexts and other parts of the world.

Source(s):
'Simulation Methods For Interactive Learning Of Environmental Systems' End of Award Report to ESRC by Noel Sheehy (1998)
'How Children Would Solve Environmental Problems', draft Working Paper by Noel Sheehy, J. Wylie, C. MacGuiness, G. Orchard (1998)

Funded by: Economic and Social Research Council, Global Environmental Change Programme

id21 Research Highlight: 3 March 2000

Further Information:
Noel Sheeley
School of Psychology
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast
BN7 1NN
Northern Ireland

Tel: +44 (0)1232 245133
Fax: +44 (0)1232 664144
Contact the contributor: n.sheehy@qub.ac.uk

Queen's University, Belfast

Other related links:
Global Envrionmental Change Programme, ESRC

Global Envrionmental Change Programme, ESRC, Core Documents

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