Measuring System Competence in Education for Sustainable Development

Nina Roczen,Janis Fögele,Frank Fischer,Rainer Mehren,Johannes Hartig

doi:10.3390/su13094932

Abstract

This paper presents the development of an instrument for the assessment of system competence in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Based on an already existing, more complex model of system competence for the school subject geography, we have developed a test that refers to central themes and principles of ESD using exclusively closed answer formats. Building on the results of cognitive laboratories and expert feedback from various fields, the instrument was (further) developed in an iterative process of feedback and revision. We conducted a quantitative pilot study with N = 366 8th and 9th grade students. The results indicate that the development of our system competence test was successful—the overall test yielded a high reliability and only very few items were not working as intended. Furthermore, the difficulties of the items were appropriate for the ability levels of the students and the results of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) suggest that the newly developed test measures system competence with one dimension. As the test is compact, easy to interpret, and yet reliable, it is particularly suitable for monitoring purposes in the field of ESD.

Highlights

Accepted: 22 April 2021Challenges in the context of sustainability are often characterized by a high degree of factual complexity
In accordance with the objectives described above, we have developed a test for measuring system competence in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) based on the precursor model for geography
We present the results of our pilot study, i.e., the results on the reliability, the alignment between students’ system competence levels and the difficulty of the test items, as well as on the dimensionality of our competence test

Summary

Introduction

Accepted: 22 April 2021Challenges in the context of sustainability are often characterized by a high degree of factual complexity. Numerous empirical studies show that dealing with complexity and the search for solutions [2,3,4] often do not do justice to this complexity and that monocausal thinking prevails instead. Instead of proceeding according to the trial and error principle, students need to be instructed to make more cognitive decisions per action, which means running through causes and their causes, or effects and effects of the effects in their mind [6]. In this sense, a so-called system thinker takes superordinate principles of systems into account in a cognitive analysis and mental representation of systems. This principle-led perspective provides a deeper understanding of the internal and external interplay and complexity of systems, which may prevent human interference in such systems having unpredictable and unwanted adverse effects [7]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion