System Dynamics and Learner-Centered-Learning in Kindergarten through 12th Grade Education

Abstract

Abstract: Pre-college education is under attack for poorly serving the needs of society. Unless a superior concept for improving education emerges, public displeasure is apt to result in still more of what is already not working. But now, a fundamentally new and more effective approach to education is emerging from advances in system dynamics. System dynamics offers a framework for giving cohesion, meaning, and motivation to education at all levels from kindergarten upward. A second important ingredient, “learnercentered learning, ” imports to pre-college education the challenge and excitement of a research laboratory. Together, these two innovations harness the creativity, curiosity, and energy of young people. System dynamics allows reversing the traditional educational sequence in which deadening years of learning facts have preceded use of those facts by introducing synthesis (putting it all together) at an early stage in a student’s experience. Such