Back

"Stock and flow diagrams" are a nice graphical tool for modeling systems. People have had success teaching them to students starting at a young age. It's a way to teach them math, economics, ecology, and other subjects in a unified way.

When you include functions describing the flows - shown as faucets here - you can turn these diagrams into differential equations. But you don't need to do that for young kids: there's a lot you can learn from these models in a purely qualitative way. Basic concepts like feedback, etc.

And once you introduce the flow functions, you can let software solve the resulting differential equations and graph their solutions even before the kids know anything like the definition of derivative! This is a good way to gently get them *interested* in calculus.

For example, below you can see a model of reindeer population on an island created by middle school students. The population soared and then crashed:

"Students built System Dynamics models to study human population dynamics, non-renewable and renewable resource utilization, economic influences, etc. In these lessons students were asked to build the model, anticipate model behavior, explain discrepancies between anticipated model behavior and actual model output, analyze feedback, then test policies on the model to determine leverage points."

For details try this:

• Diana M. Fisher, Systems thinking activities used in K-12 for up to two decades, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2023.1059733/full

#MTBoS #ITeachMath #MathEd #MathsEd

(1/2)