Systems thinking within the scope of education for sustainable development (ESD) – a heuristic competence model as a basis for (science) teacher education

Systems thinking is regarded as a key competence in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD), because it helps students to understand the complexity and dynamics of natural, social and economic systems. In our research group, we developed a competence model that distinguishes four dimensions of systems thinking in ESD. Based on this model, we designed different university courses in biology and geography teacher education and measured their effects on student teachers’ systems thinking and the pedagogical content knowledge for teaching systems thinking with two different tests. Both variables could be effectively promoted depending on the course.     

A Climatic Model of Urban Energy Budgets

A deductive model of the energy budgets of urban landscapes, based on the exchanges of energy, mass, and momentum, is introduced. The absorption of shortwave and longwave radiation and their dissipation via the channels of reradiation, convection, conduction, and evaporation are generated by the model in order to simulate the interplay of the many energy cascades among the myriad of city surfaces. A city can be geographically analyzed by determining its energy budget and resultant surface temperatures on a block-by-block basis. In spite of some simplifying assumptions, the predictions of surface temperatures of this initial model compare favorably with observations.