Systems Education for Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade in the United States: A View from the Creative Learning Exchange

Abstract

In the United States the use of system dynamics in Kindergarten through Twelfth grade education is growing but it has not yet approached the steep slope of an exponential curve. STELLA, a user-friendly system dynamics program, stimulated the first few uses of system dynamics in the classroom in Brattleboro, Vermont and Orange Grove Middle School in Arizona. The number of schools using system dynamics has grown to include, not only the schools of the STACI project from ETS but also schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Portland, Oregon; Brunswick, Georgia; Ridgewood, New Jersey; and Concord, Massachusetts. Each of these schools has started down this path through different portals. These differing starts give an insight into how other school systems might approach the venture. The Creative Learning Exchange is a non-profit organization set up to encourage networking and curriculum sharing among teachers and schools who are using system dynamics in the classroom as well as those interested in initiating the process. Over the three years of our existence, this network has grown across forty states and into almost a dozen other countries.