The potential for Artificial Intelligence is widely proclaimed. Yet, in everyday educational settings the use of this technology is limited. Particularly, if we consider smart systems that actually interact with learners in a knowledgeable way and as such support the learning process. It illustrates …

This paper presents three lesson activities for upper secondary education that focus on learning subject specific knowledge and general system thinking skills by creating a qualitative representation. The learning goals and the pedagogical approach are described.

UNLABELLED: Public library makerspaces intend to contribute to the development of children from marginalized communities through the education of digital technology and creativity and by stimulating young people to experience new social roles and develop their identity. Learning in these informal settings …

We investigate a computer supported approach in which pairs co-con-struct a qualitative representation of the dynamics of the industrial revolution in a shared workspace. A key feature of this approach concerns the use of a meta-vocabulary for representing cause-and-effect relationships that facilitates …

This contribution presents three lesson activities for lower secondary education that were developed to teach system thinking in concert with subject matter. The pedagogical approach is described, leading to a practical design philosophy for lesson activities using qualitative representations. These …

In this paper, we discuss the pedagogical approach of two lessons that are aimed at learning domain knowledge and systems thinking simultaneously using qualitative representations. Next to understanding basic cause-effect relationships, these lessons focus on the notion that systems can move through …

Systems thinking is a complex skill for learners in secondary education. We argue that qualitative representations can be valuable tools to actively engage in learning this skill. However, the effectiveness of these tools is currently hampered by complexity and the lack of instructional embedding. In …

Having learners (K7–10) acquire system thinking skills is challenging. Together with teachers we deploy qualitative representations of complex systems to enable this learning process. Teachers select their own topics for their leaners to work on which makes that lessons vary in content depending on the …