Understanding how Systems Thinking relates to other approaches
Understanding how Systems Thinking relates to other approaches
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Challenge and Opportunity:
“Systems thinking is just another name for context-based learning. We’ve been doing it for years.”
Many chemistry educators are already using rich, meaningful approaches—context-based learning, real-world applications, problem-based learning, design thinking, concept mapping, NGSS crosscutting concepts, and even tools like life-cycle analysis. It makes perfect sense to wonder whether systems thinking is simply another name for familiar practices.
Many existing approaches share important features with systems thinking—such as real-world relevance, authentic contexts, and problem-centered learning. These similarities are why the approaches are sometimes blended or confused. However, we can build on existing approaches with a systems thinking lens as an additional layer that helps students:
analyze systems as wholes
identify and reason about relationships
track causes, effects, and feedback loops
study how systems change over time
connect chemistry to broader social, environmental, and global contexts
By viewing ST as a “next step,” educators can build on their current strengths while gaining tools that deepen student reasoning about complex chemical, environmental, and societal challenges.
In other words, systems thinking doesn’t replace the great work educators already do—it elevates it.
The following sections below show how commonly used approaches already align with ST and how a systems thinking lens can help move learning one step further.
Use Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as a systems thinking entry point
Use Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as a systems thinking entry point
Why the confusion happens: LCA is a system-based tool that evaluates environmental impacts across a product’s full life cycle. Because it assesses complex systems, it feels very similar to systems thinking. In fact if you are implementing LCA into your teaching, you are already doing a great job! Here are some ways to extend this approach!
How systems thinking may complement and extend a LCA approach: Think of LCA as one excellent tool within a broader systems thinking toolkit. LCA quantifies impacts such as global warming potential or acidification potential, and adding a systems thinking approach can help students:
Expand or adjust system boundaries (e.g., interactions with the broader environment, motivating awareness, interdisciplinary collaboration, and ethical action).
Identify feedback loops among different system elements (e.g., disciplines, processes, services, products, their surrounding environment, and their relationship with sustainability impacts).
Connect chemical processes to global supply-chains, ethics, and sustainability trade-offs aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Explain why patterns occur, extending beyond chemical measurements.
Key take-away: LCA is a valuable starting point; systems thinking enriches it by adding deeper analysis of relationships, drivers, and dynamics.
Start with context-based learning and real-world examples
Start with context-based learning and real-world examples
Why the confusion happens: Both approaches situate learning within meaningful, real-world contexts.
How systems thinking may complement and extend context-based learning:
Context-based learning brings chemistry to life by anchoring ideas in real situations. Systems thinking builds on this strength by having students analyze the system behind the context—identifying relationships, causality, and emergent behaviors rather than simply observing real-world examples.
Context-based learning is a great starting point to help students understand a chemical system of interest. Engaging in additional systems thinking skills can help students gain a better understanding of how and why a system behaves.
Key take-away: Context provides the “story.” Systems thinking helps students explain the system driving the story.
Use concept mapping as a starting point, not the endpoint
Use concept mapping as a starting point, not the endpoint
Why the confusion happens: Mapping is a common tool to visualize systems and interconnected subsystems, but one can engage in systems thinking in different ways without mapping.
How systems thinking may complement and extend concept mapping:
Concept mapping is a great tool—and systems thinking gladly uses it—but it represents only one way to visualize connections. Systems thinking can expand this by inviting students to analyze system boundaries, feedback loops, and human–environment interactions and use their reasoning skills to explain causal connections and system behaviours.
Key take-away: Concept maps help visualize systems and interconnections between their components; systems thinking brings in additional layers of reasoning about system behaviour and change.
Connect real-world applications to system analysis
Connect real-world applications to system analysis
Why the confusion happens: Real-world applications are often described as “authentic,” “relevant,” or “connected to societal issues,” which overlap with the goals of systems thinking.
How systems thinking may complement and extend real-world examples:
Systems thinking is the analytical framework of a holistic, interconnected worldview, while real-world applications are the practical, tangible uses of that framework to solve complex problems.
Real-world applications are essential for engagement. Systems thinking enhances them by asking students to analyze:
how chemical problems behave within interconnected systems
how solutions in one domain affect outcomes in others
root causes, trade-offs, and unintended consequences
Key take-away: Real-world examples spark interest; systems thinking helps students understand the complex systems that shape those real-world challenges.
Integrate systems thinking into design thinking approaches
Integrate systems thinking into design thinking approaches
Why the confusion happens: Both approaches are used in STEM education, focus on solving complex problems, and support interdisciplinary learning.
How systems thinking may complement and extend design thinking:
Design thinking excels at human-centered problem solving—empathy, prototyping, and iteration. Systems thinking complements this by helping students understand how and why a problem persists by examining the broader system in which a design challenge exists: variables, interactions, feedback loops, and leverage points.
Key take-away: Design thinking helps solve problems for people. Systems thinking helps understand the system that shapes the problem.
ST is just the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) on ‘Systems and Systems Modeling
ST is just the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) on ‘Systems and Systems Modeling
Why the confusion happens: NGSS CCCs use similar language to systems thinking—systems, interactions, boundaries—and educators rightly see alignment.
How systems thinking may complement and extend NGSS CCCs:
The NGSS CCC “Systems and Systems Modeling” focuses on the importance of recognizing, examining, and modeling systems which align beautifully with systems thinking. Systems thinking extends these concepts by:
identifying variables
analyzing feedback loops
examining behavior over time
connecting systems to broader social and environmental contexts
ST supports all CCCs, not just the “Systems and Systems Modeling” strand. (York et al, 2022 outline the ways in which a systems thinking approach aligns with the NGSS CCCs)
Key take-away: NGSS CCCs provide a framework; systems thinking provides an additional tool for analyzing and making sense of chemical phenomena within that framework.
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