3.1 Introduction

Systems thinking is important in science education to help students make sense of complexity in (biological) systems (Verhoeff et al., 2018). Researchers agree that this higher-order thinking skill can assist students to create a more coherent understanding of biology by seeing the universal principles that apply to biological systems at different biological levels of organization (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007; Knippels & Waarlo, 2018; Raved & Yarden, 2014; Verhoeff et al., 2008). Nowadays, many curricula include systems thinking (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; Yoon et al., 2018). For example, the American Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) include the crosscutting concept ‘systems and system models’ which focuses on defining systems, specifying their boundaries and using models (NRC, 2012). In the Netherlands, systems thinking has been part of the end terms for secondary biology education since 2010 (Boersma et al., 2010). It is described as ‘the ability to differentiate between different levels of biological organization, elaborate relationships within and between different levels of biological organization and explain how biological units maintain and develop themselves on different levels of biological organization’ (Boersma et al., 2010, p. 33).

3.1.1 Definitions of Systems Thinking

While systems thinking has been part of many curricula for some time now, multiple definitions of systems thinking can be found in the science education literature. Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion (2005) use the Systems Thinking Hierarchical (STH) model to describe the skills systems thinking includes, that is the ability to: (1) identify the system components and processes; (2) identify relationships between separate components and processes; (3) understand the cyclic nature of systems and organize components and place them within a network of relationships and make generalizations; (4) understand the hidden components of the system and the system evolution in time (prediction and retrospection). The National Research Council (NRC, 2012, pp. 63–64) defines systems thinking as ‘the ability to understand how an entire system works, how an action, change, or malfunction in one part of the system affects the rest of the system; adopting a ‘big picture’ perspective on work. It includes judgment and decision-making; system analysis; and systems evaluation as well as abstract reasoning about how the different elements of a work process interact.’ Hmelo-Silver et al. (2017) describe systems thinking in terms of the Components-Mechanisms-Phenomena (CMP) conceptual representation. This representation supports students to think about the components (C) of a particular phenomenon (P) and how they interact to result in a specific mechanism (M) of the phenomenon.

According to Boersma et al. (2011), differences in the definitions of systems thinking can be attributed to the implicit or explicit reference to three systems theories that systems thinking originates from, that is General Systems Theory (GST), Cybernetics and Dynamical Systems Theories (DST). Each systems theory has its own focus and corresponding systems key concepts. GST focuses on the hierarchical structure of open systems and the key concepts are: identity, system boundary, level of biological organization, components and in- and output (Von Bertalanffy, 1968). Cybernetics focuses on self-regulating networks and the key concepts are feedback, self-regulation and equilibrium (Wiener, 1948). DST focuses on the self-organizing component of biological systems and the key concepts are self-organization, emergence, nonlinearity and equilibrium states (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; Thelen & Smith, 1994). The results of the study of Boersma et al. (2011) showed that most science education studies focused on only some systems concepts in their definition, while they and Verhoeff et al. (2018) recommend to focus on the systems concepts of all three systems theories. The systems concepts can be used as a perspective to explore and analyze complex biological phenomena as biological systems and make predictions about future behavior of a system.

In a previous study (Gilissen et al., 2020a), we investigated how Dutch upper-secondary biology teachers (n = 8) and teacher educators (n = 9) define systems thinking and how they pay attention to systems thinking in their teaching practice. We studied how their definitions and teaching relate to the three systems theories (GST, Cybernetics and DST) and the perspective of current experts, that is systems biologists (n = 7). The following five systems thinking aspects were extracted from the conducted interviews and implicitly refer to one or more systems theories (Table 3.1):

  1. 1.

    Identify the system: Biological entities can be seen as systems: they can be distinguished from their environment with a boundary and they consist of different interacting components.

  2. 2.

    Input and output: Biological systems are open systems; they interact with their environment. Matter, energy and/or information enter the system (input), then the system itself can be seen as a black box where all sorts of processes take place and after that, matter, energy and/or information comes out (output). Dynamic behaviour arises when the input and output of a system changes over time. Moreover, systems are self-regulating. Some of the system components form a control loop. Negative feedback loops tend to reduce disturbances, for example, change in input and positive feedback loops increase the effect of a disturbance in a system. Systems at the level of the cell and the organism converge to a steady state with the aid of negative feedback loops, which is called homeostasis.

  3. 3.

    Emergence: The interactions between the components of a (sub)system can lead to appearing of new qualities at a higher organizational level. This phenomenon is called emergence.

  4. 4.

    Development: A system develops over time, for example, in terms of developmental biology (how does an individual develop during his life) or in terms of evolution.

  5. 5.

    Modelling: Biological systems can be visualized in a quantitative computational or qualitative model to study the system of interest more in detail, for example, to make predictions about the systems behaviour.

All systems biologists indicated the importance of the five systems thinking aspects related to the three systems theories in the questionnaire, which is in line with Boersma et al. (2011) and Verhoeff et al. (2018) who argue that systems thinking comprises the systems concepts of all three systems theories. The teacher educators indicated most of the aspects that are included in the three systems theories as important, while the teachers mostly emphasized the systems concepts of the GST and Cybernetics (Table 3.1). Thus, it seems that the perspectives of teachers and educators are mostly in line with the experts and the systems theories. Despite the teachers and educators emphasizing the importance of systems thinking for biology education, the results showed that systems thinking could receive more attention in Dutch teaching practice. The teacher educators indicated that they paid limited attention to systems thinking in their practice because ‘there is not enough time to extensively elaborate on something complex like systems thinking’. The teachers seem to include systems thinking rarely or only implicitly in their teaching practice because they do not know how to do it. This is a pity because systems thinking can play an important role in creating a coherent overview of biology for students. Systems thinking allows for changing the focus in biology education from an overload of concepts, which are presented in the school textbooks, to a number of key concepts (that is system characteristics) which can be applied and are useful in a wide variety of biological contexts (Verhoeff, 2003). This would even make it possible to save time, because the focus is on understanding the key concepts which are needed to understand biological phenomena in general, instead of on teaching all the different chapters in the school textbooks.

Table 3.1 Overview of the different systems thinking aspects that were extracted from the interviews and related to one or more systems theories, that is General Systems Theory (GST), Cybernetics (C) and Dynamical Systems Theories (DST)
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3.1.2 Teaching Systems Thinking

Literature gives several recommendations regarding teaching systems thinking, but there is no ready-to-use pedagogy for teachers to implement systems thinking in biology education yet.

According to Verhoeff et al. (2018), systems thinking can be implemented in education as a metacognitive strategy to understand biology. Systems can be identified in all biological phenomena around us and share universal system characteristics. Based on the systems theoretical concepts of three systems theories described by Boersma et al. (2011) and the systems thinking aspects that are emphasized as important by current systems biologists, seven system characteristics can be identified: systems have a boundary, consist of different interacting components, have an input and output, are regulated by feedback loops, are dynamic and are hierarchical (involve different levels of biological organization) (Gilissen et al., 2020a). Moreover, an overarching characteristic can be identified, that is emergence. Systems have emergent properties which are new qualities that emerge from the interactions between the components of the system. For example, collaboration of different organs, for example, muscles and nerves, at the organism level leads to the emergent property of walking.

Taking a systems’ perspective to biology means an understanding of the causes of the interactions between the components among different levels of biological organization that result in emergent properties. Students have to be assisted to learn to reason across these different levels when explaining complex biological phenomena (Asshoff et al., 2019; Knippels & Waarlo, 2018). The yo-yo learning and teaching strategy focuses, among others, on the system characteristics hierarchy and interactions and can be used to foster students thinking between and within these levels (Knippels, 2002; Knippels & Waarlo, 2018). This strategy includes a guided learning dialogue starting with a central question/problem. Causal explanations can be found by moving down to lower levels of biological organization and functional explanations by moving up to higher levels (Knippels & Waarlo, 2018).

Awareness of the universal system characteristics can be helpful to understand biological systems in various contexts: the system characteristics can be used as a perspective or lens to see biology in a more coherent way (Verhoeff et al., 2018). Experts seem to make significantly more explicit references to system characteristics, i.e., apply systems language (Jacobson, 2001) and integrate more dynamic structures, behaviours and functions in their reasoning (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Novices naturally seem to focus more on the perceptually available, static structures of involved subsystems. Therefore, researchers recommend stimulating students’ explicit use of the system characteristics during their reasoning (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007; Jordan et al., 2013; Tripto et al., 2016; Tripto et al., 2018; Westra, 2008; Verhoeff et al., 2008; Verhoeff et al., 2018). Results from the study of Tripto et al. (2016) showed that the use of explicit systems language by teachers encouraged students to make more use of systems language themselves in comparison to a control group.

The National Research Council (2012) emphasizes to teach students to make an explicit model (for example, a schematic drawing) of the system of interest in which the main system components and their interactions are made visual. A visualization of a system provides a way to understand the system under study and test hypotheses. Modelling qualitatively or quantitatively provides a way to make the invisible visible (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Qualitative modelling approaches focus on representation of systems in a more abstract way showing some system characteristics (Verhoeff et al., 2008) and quantitative modelling approaches focus on the (mathematical) prediction of the system’s behaviour (Wilensky & Reisman, 2006). In both modelling approaches, the focus is on identifying the system components (‘agents’) and their interactions (‘actions’). Verhoeff et al. (2018) recommend qualitative modelling to develop an initial systems concept.

3.1.3 Focus of the Research

The overarching aim of our study is to implement systems thinking in Dutch upper-secondary biology education in a sustainable manner. To bridge the gap between research and educational practice, we involved teachers in our study as co-designers. The interplay between researchers, teachers and students makes it possible to go from the intended level (theory about (teaching) systems thinking brought in by the researchers), to the implemented level (design and enactment of the lessons by the teachers), to the attained level (student products and observations provide information about student learning) (Van den Akker, 2006). Another advantage of teachers as co-designers is the chance of good implementation fidelity (Sandoval, 2014); because the teachers participate in the design process, they know how the lesson should be taught because they are aware of the underlying principles of the lesson. In this chapter, we focus on the contributions of teachers during the design process of a learning and teaching strategy on systems thinking and their (learning) experiences.

Lesson Study (LS) was used to design and evaluate lessons on systems thinking in collaboration with teachers. LS is an approach in which a team of teachers collaboratively designs, performs, observes and evaluates a lesson in different steps, the so-called research lessons (Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004; Hart et al., 2011; de Vries et al., 2016). These lessons consist of several learning and teaching activities, the so-called key activities. An LS team is assisted by a knowledgeable other (in our case the researchers) who chairs, prepares and summarizes the meetings of the LS team (Takahashi, 2014). Although, LS originally is known as a teacher professional development approach (Lewis et al., 2006), it is also used nowadays for research purposes (Bakker, 2018, p. 16). While the role of teachers as co-designers has been emphasized by several studies (Cober et al., 2015; Westbroek et al., 2019; Penuel, 2019), it seems that there are no studies that report about the contributions and learning experiences of teachers as co-designers in a research purposed LS approach. Therefore, the following research questions are addressed:

  1. 1.

    What is the contribution of teachers in the design of a teaching and learning approach in the context of Lesson Study to foster students’ systems thinking?

  2. 2.

    What do teachers report to have learned from their participation in a Lesson Study trajectory on teaching systems thinking?

3.2 Method

This chapter reports about two Lesson Study (LS) cycles. Both case studies have been analysed in a qualitative way. Each LS cycle consists of various steps:

  • Design of the lesson: determine student learning goals, corresponding key activities to achieve these goals and expected behaviour for different types of students that will be observed, the so-called case students;

  • Enactment of the designed lesson: one teacher teaches the lesson, while the other team members observe specific case students to determine students’ learning caused by the key activities;

  • Evaluation, improvement and re-enactment of the lesson in a second class by another teacher. After enactment of the lessons, the observers conducted a short interview (maximum 5 min) with the case students in which they asked what the students think they have learned, what they valued in the lesson and how they think the lesson could be improved. These interviews, the observation notes of the lesson and the student materials are used as input for the evaluation meetings.

The different LS meetings and the enactment of the designed lesson give the opportunity to investigate the contributions and learning experiences of the teachers during the whole process.

3.2.1 Participants

The lessons were designed and evaluated in close collaboration with the three authors of this chapter (from now on called researchers) and two secondary biology teachers. The three researchers functioned as knowledgeable other (Takahashi, 2014) in the LS team which means that they explained the LS approach to the teachers, introduced the main recommendations from literature, chaired the meetings, worked out the lesson plans in more detail and summarized the meetings. The first researcher has 5 years of experience as a secondary biology teacher and is a colleague of the involved teachers. She was present during the whole LS trajectory, while the second and third author attended a couple of the meetings. Julia (pseudonym) is female, has a background in physiotherapy and has 8 years of experience as a secondary biology teacher. Frans (pseudonym) is male, has a background in tropical forestry and has 10 years of experience as a secondary biology teacher. The school belongs to a school community in the eastern part of the Netherlands and offers senior general secondary education and pre-university education. During the lessons and the evaluation meetings, the LS team was accompanied by an extra observer, which is the second or third author or a staff member of the school. The two lessons were performed in two senior general secondary biology education classes (n = 26, n = 29, 15–16 years old students), lasted 60 min and were performed during school year 2018–2019. For each lesson, three case-students (and three back-up students) were selected to observe in detail. The selection of students for lesson 1 was based on motivation because the teachers did not have test scores yet: case student A represents an obviously motivated and hard-working student, student B represents a quiet but hard-working student, student C represents a passive student. The selection of students for lesson 2 was based on their average scores on a regular biology test: case student A scored especially well on the insight and application questions, student B on the application questions and student C scored high on the factual questions.

3.2.2 LS Meetings

LS 1 consisted of four preparation meetings, the enactment of the first version (1α) and second version (1ß) of the lesson in classroom practice, two meetings in which the taught lessons were discussed and improved and one evaluation meeting. LS 2 consisted of two preparation meetings, the enactment of the first version (2α) and second version (2ß) of the lesson in classroom practice, two meetings in which the taught lessons were discussed and improved and one evaluation meeting. All meetings lasted between 1 and 2 hours, were audio-recorded and summarized. Design choices and challenges (decision points) were highlighted and categorized into the following emerging categories, “teachers’ knowledge of student capabilities”, “teachers’ didactical knowledge”, “teachers’ motives”, “practical concerns of the teachers”, “literature provided by the researchers” and “student observations and products” (Tables 3.2 and 3.3).

Table 3.2 Illustration of the decision points the teachers faced during the development of lesson 1
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Table 3.3 Illustration of the decision points the teachers faced during the development of lesson 2
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3.2.3 Designed Lessons

3.2.3.1 Lesson 1

The four different preparation meetings in the LS team led to the design of lesson 1 with the following learning goal: students are able to name, apply and describe the eight system characteristics, that is boundary, components, interactions, input output, feedback, dynamics, hierarchy and emergence. Lesson 1α consisted of three key learning and teaching activities:

  1. 1.

    Introduction of the system characteristics in a teacher-student conversation in a well-known non-biological context. After a short general explanation of the characteristics by the teacher with the aid of the tangram and guiding questions (Fig. 3.1), the students applied the system characteristics to the school as a system in a teacher-student conversation. Duration: 25 min.

  2. 2.

    Application of the system characteristics to a biological context. Students, in groups of 3 or 4, had to answer the guiding questions related to the different system characteristics in the context of the cell as a system. Duration: 20 min.

  3. 3.

    Naming and describing the system characteristics. To determine whether the students achieved the learning goal, the students had to name and describe the characteristics in their own words. Duration: 15 min.

In lesson 1ß key activity 1, the teachers explained the system characteristics in the context of the school themselves (and did not ask the students to do this) which led to a shortening of this activity from 25 to 10 min. In this case, it was possible to add an extra step to activity 2. After answering the guiding questions, the student groups exchanged their answers and gave feedback on the answers of the other group.

Fig. 3.1
figure 1

(a) presents the tangram which has been used as a metaphor for the different system characteristics that are symbolized with icons. The individual pieces (with different shapes) represent specific system characteristics and together they illustrate the concept of emergence: the different pieces together form a new shape, for example, a bigger square. (b) presents the guiding questions related to the different system characteristics which can be used to investigate a specific biological system from a systems perspective

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3.2.3.2 Lesson 2

Two preparation meetings in the LS team led to the design of lesson 2 with the following learning goals: (1) Students are able to recognize and describe the system characteristics in a new biological context; (2) Students are able to formulate questions related to the system characteristics to identify and unravel an unknown system. Lesson 2α consisted of three key learning and teaching activities:

  1. 1.

    Visualization of the blood glucose regulation. In groups of 3 or 4, students had to visualize the glucose regulation of a person over one day with a seesaw in a roleplay. The case student had to draw the fluctuating glucose level in a graph. The other students had to play the role of control centre and the alpha and beta cells in the pancreas. Duration: 20 min.

  2. 2.

    Explanation of the glucose fluctuations. The students had to explain why there is an increase or decrease in the glucose level they have drawn in the graph. Duration: 10 min.

  3. 3.

    Description of feedback and dynamics. The students had to describe the system characteristics feedback and dynamics for the context of glucose regulation. Duration: 10 min.

  4. 4.

    Recognition of dynamics. The teacher evaluated the different causes of fluctuations in the graph and asked the students: Can you think of another (biological) system which shows dynamic behaviour? Duration: 10 min.

  5. 5.

    Formulation of questions to unravel system X. Students had to formulate questions to unravel what system X is and how it works. Duration: 10 min.

In lesson 2ß, the second enactment of the lesson, small adjustments were made to key activity 1 and 2. The format of the graph was adapted: the previous graph represented different moments during the day on the x-axis (for example, breakfast, lunch and so on) and the new graph represented time in hours of the day. Moreover, the students received four different coloured pens which represented different variables: intake of food, activity, glucagon and insulin. The students could make use of the different colours to indicate the cause of an increase or decrease of glucose in the graph.

3.2.4 Pre- and Post-interviews

Before and after the LS trajectory individual semi-structured interviews (approximately 60 min) were conducted with the two teachers. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim by the first researcher. The aim of the interviews was to determine teachers’ reported learning progression regarding (teaching) systems thinking and their experiences of the LS trajectory. The transcripts of the pre- and post-interviews were analysed with a qualitative bottom-up approach in which the following emerging codes were used to summarize the interviews: “understanding of systems thinking”, “teaching systems thinking” and “(expected) (learning) experiences of the LS trajectory” (Table 3.4).

Table 3.4 Reported learning experiences of the teachers related to (teaching) systems thinking the LS trajectory
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3.3 Results

3.3.1 RQ1: Contributions of the Teachers

During the design and evaluation phase of lesson 1, the teachers encountered four main decision points: specifying the learning goal of the lesson, the way to introduce the system characteristics, the context in which the system characteristics can be introduced and the effectivity of the lesson (Table 3.2). Teachers used their knowledge of student capabilities to align the learning goal of the lesson to students’ initial knowledge situation and to determine possible difficulties to achieve the student learning goal. Teachers used their didactical knowledge to think of a way to achieve the learning goal supported with recommendations from the literature provided by the researchers. Practical concerns also influenced the final design of the lesson, for example, connection of the lesson to the regular lessons by using the same biological topic. The teachers seemed to evaluate the lessons based on the student observations and products.

During the design and evaluation phase of lesson 2, the teachers encountered five main decision points: specifying the learning goal of the lesson, the topic/context, the way to improve student understanding of the characteristics feedback and dynamics, the way to visualize student thinking and the effectivity of the lesson (Table 3). Based on student products of lesson 1, teachers developed ‘new’ knowledge of student capabilities in relation to systems thinking which they used to specify the learning goal of lesson 2. The choice of the topic/context for the lesson was based on practical concerns: how does it fit in the regular lessons? The teachers designed the teaching activities with the use of input from the literature and their own didactical knowledge, and the lesson was evaluated with the use of student observations and products.

3.3.2 RQ2: Learning Experiences

Teachers’ answers in the pre- and post-interviews were used to determine what they have learned about (teaching) systems thinking and how they experienced the LS trajectory (Table 3.4). Both teachers reported a more sophisticated understanding of systems thinking and biology in general. Moreover, they both indicated they did not expect it should be so difficult to foster students’ systems thinking, but they also mentioned new insights and possible ways to achieve students’ systems thinking in their future teaching, which new acquired knowledge of student capabilities and didactical knowledge. Based on the interviews, it seemed that the intensive LS trajectory encouraged the teachers to think more in detail about a lesson.

3.4 Conclusion

The first aim of this chapter was to give insight into teachers’ contributions during the design process of two lessons to foster students’ systems thinking. Analyses of the meetings of the two Lesson Study (LS) cycles (Tables 3.2 and 3.3) show that in both lessons the LS team made decisions about the same major issues, for example, specifying the learning goals, the choice of the key learning and teaching activities and the determination of the effectivity of the lessons (Fig. 3.2). The learning goals of both lessons were specified with the use of teachers’ knowledge of student capabilities. The choices for the various key learning and teaching activities were based on recommendations from the literature (which was provided by the researchers), teachers’ didactical knowledge and practical concerns, for example, which topic is now taught in the regular lessons and how could this be combined in a lesson focused on systems thinking. The evaluation of the lessons, in terms of student learning, was performed with the aid of student products and the observations of the students. Overall, the contributions of the teachers seem to be in terms of their knowledge of student capabilities, didactical knowledge and practical applicability. The main advantage of the involvement of teachers is that the designed lessons are more connected to students’ capabilities and daily classroom practice.

Fig. 3.2
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Overview of the different steps in the design and evaluation process. The light grey circles represent the input from the teachers, the white circle the input from literature (provided by the researchers) and the dark grey circles are output of the lessons which gave input to the team to evaluate the effectivity of the lessons

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The second aim of this chapter was to give insight into the reported learning experiences of the teachers. As the teachers indicated in the post-interview, they learned a lot from the LS trajectory. This was due to the fact that a lesson is discussed in a lot of detail, which is (unfortunately due to time constraints) often not possible for their regular lessons. They indicated LS stimulates them to think more deeply about a lesson in terms of student goals, key learning and teaching activities and expected student behaviour, which led to well thought out lessons. Moreover, this trajectory gave them insight into ways to foster students’ systems thinking, but also let them experience the difficulty of fostering such a higher-order thinking skill as systems thinking by students. Both teachers indicate they now have a clear idea on how they would foster students’ systems thinking in their regular lessons in the future, for example, early introduction of the system characteristics (for example already in lower secondary biology education) in a well-known biological context and regular repetition of these characteristics and guiding questions in different biological contexts. The question remains how they can let students experience the value of the use of the system characteristics to understand biology in a more coherent way. Frans already suggested to use the system characteristics to solve a complex biological problem. Whether this motivates students to use a systems thinking perspective could be investigated in a future LS trajectory.

Both teachers are very positive about their participation: they learned a lot, felt engaged and are proud about the developed lessons. There are only two points that require some attention. The teachers sometimes felt insecure about their teaching actions. They did not know what to do or say when students were working on an assignment, because they were afraid of influencing the research. A similar result is found by Jansen et al. (2021), which showed that teachers can have the feeling that they have to perform well, because they would otherwise hinder the research. In future studies, it is important to talk about this possible anxiety of teachers and to think of ways to avoid it. In retrospect on our study, it would be of great importance to discuss in detail how much assistance teachers could give to individual students during the activities, for example, which scaffolds can be given. The second point is that teacher ‘Julia’ indicated that she sometimes felt a bit passive because the first researcher worked out all the details. The researchers opted for this in order to relieve the teachers’ workload and thereby prevent their dropping out of the study. Participation in an LS trajectory is time-consuming; all meetings together took approximately 30 hours and teachers in the Netherlands already have a high workload.

LS is known as a teacher professional development approach (Lewis et al., 2006). The results show that the teachers in our study learned to think more in-depth about a lesson design, but also learned how they can implement systems thinking in their daily classroom practice, which is development of ‘new’ knowledge regarding student capabilities and didactical knowledge. Originally, an LS trajectory starts from questions that teachers struggle with. In this specific case study, we involved teachers to solve a question from the research team: how can we foster students’ systems thinking? Fortunately, the pre-interviews showed that the teachers were motivated to participate in this study. They indicated seeing the importance of systems thinking for biology students, but also declared that they did not pay explicit attention to systems thinking in their daily classroom practice. The teachers also indicated that they were proud of the lessons they developed themselves, which shows ownership. We think that enthusiasm at the beginning and ensuring teachers’ sense of ownership are important prerequisites for a successful designing process.

Overall, this case study is an example in which teachers and researchers closely collaborated on the design and evaluation of lessons to get insight into how students can be fostered to develop systems thinking. It illustrates how expertise from educational practice can be combined with expertise from educational research and so bridge the gap between education and research. The close involvement of teachers in designing an approach to systems thinking proved to be of great value in leveraging students’ capability of dealing with complexity in biology.

When interpreting the conclusions of this chapter, it is important to take into account that this is a qualitative case study in which only two teachers were involved. Despite the small scale of the study, it has shown that LS can be utilised as a useful instrument to bridge the gap between theory-driven research and educational practice. With LS, teachers’ knowledge of student capabilities, didactical knowledge and practical applicability can be integrated with theoretical knowledge from the educational research community, but can also lead to the construction of new theoretical knowledge. For example, the LS trajectory also led to heuristics regarding teaching systems thinking in biology education (Gilissen et al., 2020b). These heuristics will form the basis for follow-up studies in which they will be given in the hands of in- and pre-service teachers in the context of professional development activities. The main goal will be to investigate how the LS results can act as a germ for further dissemination of systems thinking in biology education by embedding the resulting heuristics into new teaching activities.