Undergraduate Students’ Engagement With Systems Thinking: Results of a Survey Study
本研究使用问卷测量了本科生对系统思维的情感参与，发现学生在三个维度上都重视系统思维，且性别差异不显著，但年龄、工作经验和大学所在国家会影响对实践维度的参与。
This paper describes the results obtained for the affective engagement of students with systems thinking (ST). In prior work, the authors have developed and validated a questionnaire instrument for measuring affective engagement of undergraduate engineering students with ST. This paper presents results obtained when the questionnaire was used with undergraduate students. Two surveys with different versions of the questionnaire, one using positive grammar questions only and the other using a mix of positive and negative constructs, were used to measure the students' engagement with ST and its relationship with gender, age, and work experience. Each questionnaire version was applied to a different sample, the first, 186 participants, completed the positive grammar version, and, the second group of 163 completed the mixed version. The results show that participants in both studies valued ST in each of the three dimensions of the ST construct. Statistical tests confirmed no significant gender differences in either study. Student engagement with the practical dimension of ST was shown to vary, with statistical significance, with groups of age, years of work experience, and country of the university.