Scholarly discourse of systems thinking within and beyond STEM education

Abstract Background An overarching goal of STEM education is to support learners in developing systems thinking (ST), a set of cognitive resources used to work with and understand systems. Although systems are widespread, ways of describing and using ST vary across disciplines (including STEM education), and their similarities and differences are still largely understudied. This study continues a bibliometric survey of ST literature across diverse disciplinary communities to provide a multidisciplinary overview of ST. Our research asks: (1) What are the most recognized contributions from seminal ST works in different disciplinary communities? (2) What are the emerging trends and research advancements in recent STEM education literature on ST? Results The results reveal that ST is an evolving set of related ideas and perspectives for working with and understanding systems, generated within scholarly communities. ST perspectives are often situated within distinct theoretical perspectives and can be reactionary or community-specific. This report provides summaries of non-STEM-specific ST framings (including system dynamics, soft systems, critical systems, meta-systems, health systems, and general systems) for STEM educators and education researchers to consider. Since 2015, research productivity on ST in STEM education has grown sharply. Several publications likely to seed future research on ST in STEM education were identified. Conclusions We discuss contributions to STEM education from other communities engaged in ST scholarship, with a focus on leveraging alternative systems thinking perspectives and the role of disciplinarity. The diverse ST communities and frameworks are worth consideration as STEM education scholars balance specialization with integration of the disciplines.