2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Systems thinking is a relevant part of engineering education [1]. Incorporating systems thinking into the engineering design process helps students clarify the complex context in which engineering takes place [2]. The importance of systems thinking has led to its inclusion in K-12 education through the NGSS cross-cutting concepts [3]. The National Research Council [4] emphasizes that in engineering projects, systems thinking contributes to the development, sharing, testing, and refining of design ideas. System thinking entails “understanding part–whole relationships, and how choices for parts of a system have consequences for the overall functioning of the whole system” [1, p. 496].
While the National Science Foundation [5] emphasizes the need to expand research that contributes to understanding the development of systems thinking, Levy and Moore [3] highlight that this knowledge, particularly with elementary students, remains largely underexplored. Additionally, there is a notable lack of research in the field of engineering education and systems thinking with homeschooling settings. Homeschooling is an educational system where parents educate their children, known as homeschoolers, at home [6]. Families often form homeschooling communities to collaborate on activities [7].
Therefore, this research addresses the need to expand the limited knowledge in pre-college engineering education regarding the development of systems thinking in homeschooling settings. This study is grounded in a conceptual framework that integrates the vision of STEM Education integrated and Systems Thinking worldview. STEM Education Integrated promotes the use of real-world problems, where various disciplines are applied to understand or solve the issue [8]. Systems thinking “represents a worldview, a way of thinking about the world that emerges as an individual grows in ability and willingness to see it holistically” [9, p. 936]. The research question guiding this study is: How is systems thinking developed in pre-college homeschoolers when they participate in an integrated STEM learning experience?
We selected a homeschooling community, for this work-in-progress, we focus on the preliminary results from a team of three homeschoolers. We developed a qualitative case study research design [10]. A Integrated STEM learning experience was designed around the context of ocean acidification. Data for analysis were gathered from audio recordings, presentations, and models created by the students. An a priori coding [11] was developed, focusing on analyzing the cognitive learning objectives for systems thinking in engineering education from Litzinger [2].
Preliminary results indicate that, through participation in the integrated STEM learning experience, the homeschoolers were able to progress through the four cognitive learning objectives related to systems thinking expected for K-12 students -Applying basic terminology, Defining the system, Identifying and characterizing interactions, and Creating models of the system-. The homeschoolers drew on their personal and family experiences to describe their understanding of the ocean acidification phenomenon. We believe that some of the significances of this research include the pursuit of inclusive education that encompasses homeschooling communities, as well as informing the pre-college engineering education field about STEM learning experiences that can foster the development of systems thinking in engineering education among homeschooled students.