Using Systems Thinking, System Dynamics and Simulation for Sustainability Education: A Study Design

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is vital to the success of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is broad consensus that it requires active, participative and experiential learning methods, underpinned by systemic thinking. Goals for ESD include better critical thinking and an improved ability to analyse complex problems, to make judgements and decisions and to act accordingly. And yet, ESD has so far proved difficult to implement. One reason for this is that systemic understanding is required to comprehend the intricate interplay of causal connections typically underlying sustainability issues. This research describes an experimental approach to investigate whether ESD can be shown to benefit from Systems Thinking and System Dynamics simulation. It attempts to consolidate and build on the body of knowledge that has accumulated since the 1970s around modelling and simulation of complex human-environmental systems, and the use of such models to teach Systems Thinking and sustainability skills. This paper describes a new study design that builds on a recent pilot study undertaken in the field of Ocean Literacy education. The pilot study, centred on the problem of Sustainable Coastal Tourism, found promising results from combining a Systems Thinking approach with hands-on interactive simulation. This new study is designed to address the broader concept of teaching sustainability. It centres on the problem of Sustainable Deer Herd Management, one that has often been modelled in the System Dynamics field and has the benefit of being relatively simple systemically, with clearly definable sustainability goals. This research is designed to investigate whether the application of Systems Thinking to a well-defined sustainability problem enhances the learners practical understanding, whether interacting with model simulations also enhances it, whether applying both has the greatest effect, and whether they increase the transfer of skills to another sustainability problem in a different field, that has a similar systemic structure (Sustainable Fisheries Management).