SYSTEMS

THINKING IN EDUCATION FOR

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO ASSESSING THE INFLUENCE OF SYSTEMS THINKING ON THE DEVELOPMENT
OF SUSTAINABILITY COMPETENCES OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN AHMEDABAD, INDIA

MSc thesis by F.C.A. (Floor) van den Elzen



Master thesis MSc Sustainable Development

Utrecht University

Course: GEO4-2321

Author: Floor van den Elzen (5566533)
E-mail: Floor.vdElzen@gmail.com
Mobile: +31 6 166 446 03

Track: Environmental Governance
Supervisor: Dr. Bettina Bluemling
E-mail: B.Bluemling@uu.nl
Credits: 45 ECTS
Second reader: Dr. Carel Dieperink
E-mail: C.Dieperink@uu.nl

Internship at:
Centre for Environment Education
Thaltej Tekra Ahmedabad, 380 054
Gujarat, India
Contact: Bijoy Goswami
E-mail: Bijoy.Goswami@ceeindia.org


Word count: 38.840

Cover photo: Picture of students of Rachana School, taken while working on mystery exercise. Photos
throughout the report were taken at the schools that participated in the experiment.

SUMMARY
Over four decades after Indira Gandhi, then prime-minister of India, effectively coupled environment and
development issues by stating environmental problems of developing nations to reflect inadequacy of
development, rather than excessiveness of industrialisation, India is little closer to reaching a mode of
sustainable development.

There is an apparent need for young people to develop competences to cope with the world’s increasing
uncertainty connected to sustainability challenges present today and those yet to come. As policy does not
prove sufficient, policy-makers are calling upon education to help make society more sustainable.
Intergovernmental organisations have issued different programmes on education for sustainable development
(ESD) and education has been given an important role in the recently coined Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs).

ESD practitioners and researchers, however, signal a lack of data on the way students develop sustainability
competences and experience a lack of methods to capture students’ ESD capacities in measurement.
Furthermore, although academics has produced multiple lists and categories of competences deemed
important for participation is sustainable development processes, there appears to be a lack of attention for
the relationship between sustainability competences.

This study set out to test and evaluate the impact of systems thinking on the development of sustainability
competences of secondary school students in Ahmedabad, India by designing an educational intervention,
testing it in an experiment using Solomon four group design, developing and using a measurement survey to
determine its impact, and triangulating the outcomes with qualitative data taken from document analysis,
literature review, (non-)participatory observation, and semi-structured interviews.

The main results of this study are as follows:

1. The experiment results confirm an influence of systems thinking on the development of other
sustainability competences, to the extent that experiencing a systems thinking process increases a
students’ ability to understand complex systems, including its spatial, temporal and disciplinary
components.
2. To increase sustainability competences through systems thinking, experiencing systems thinking is
crucial. In the experiment, results showed a positive impact of doing the measurement, which
consisted of systems thinking exercises.
3. In experiencing systems thinking processes, the importance of reflection, evaluation and (teacher)
guidance is emphasised. This is signalled as one of the main bottlenecks in the implementation of ESD
in Gujarat, India.

Other outcomes include a description of the current state of ESD in Ahmedabad and Gujarat, and a set of
recommendations concerning the future application of innovative methods of measuring sustainability
competences.

PREFACE
A little over a year before handing in this thesis, I was asked to travel to India for a conference on education as
a driver for the newly instated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the time, I was a part of the board of
Morgen, a Dutch student-led volunteer organisation that works for the integration of sustainability into higher
education. In this role, we had been in contact with the sustainability education part of the Dutch Enterprise
Organisation (RVO), which in turn had links with the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) in Ahmedabad,
India. Our contact at RVO had been invited to attend the conference but found that – as the conference would
have an emphasis on the role of youth – it would be better for us to go. Within a week of first hearing about
Ahmedabad, I was on the plane to India and – upon arrival – was immediately impressed by the people I met
and the work they were doing.

In my work for Morgen and Green Office Utrecht, the sustainability hub of Utrecht University, I had been
working on sustainability education for longer, but it was only after my first visit to Ahmedabad that I got an
idea of the wealth of work that was being done on this topic worldwide. One of the remarks that made the
biggest impression on me on that occasion was the following made by Anil Gupta, profession at the Indian
Institute of Management:

Education can either learn to think and act freely, or teach a younger generation to conform.

Where I had previously seen education as a positive force that could be used for the goals of sustainable
development, this statement emphasised the urgency of transforming the education system. Education does
not only offer an opportunity when it comes to sustainable development, but inaction in this field also
continuously reinforces the (unsustainable) status quo.

In the first course of this master programme, I consciously experienced systems thinking for the first time. Since
then I have been trying to train myself to see systems in my surrounding and the complexity of processes
happening around us has since never seized to amaze me. I have found that it is this amazement that makes
me passionate about sustainability and its urgency. I am very thankful for this research project allowing me to
combine my interest in systems thinking with my involvement in sustainability education, while offering the
opportunity to get to know a new environment in the process.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all my colleagues at CEE. Special thanks to Rajeswari Gorana,
who was inspiring to speak to when it came to systems thinking, to Bijoy Goswami, who helped me get to know
the organisation and the people that I spoke to, to Harshal Korhale, for helping me arrange the schools and
transporting me around Ahmedabad on the back of his scooter, and to the director of CEE, Kartikeya Sarabhai,
for being incredibly inspirational.

From Utrecht, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Bettina Bluemling for her detailed feedback and valuable
support.

LIST OF ACRONYMS
CBSE Central Board of Secondary Education

CCE Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation

CCIS Cosmos Castle International School

CEE Centre for Environment Education

DESD Decade for Education for Sustainable Development

EE Environmental Education

EFA Education For All

ESD Education for Sustainable Development

GCERT Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training

GSEB Gujarat Secondary Education Board

IB International Baccalaureate

ICSE Indian School Certificate

MDGs Millennium Development Goals

NCERT National Council of Educational Research and Training

NCF National Curriculum Framework

NCTE National Council of Teacher Education

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OECD DeSeCO OECS Definition and Selection of key Competencies

SDGs Sustainable Development Goals

St. Kabir DIO St. Kabir Drive-In Old branch

St. Kabir NAR St. Kabir Naranpura

UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe

UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNESCO GAP UNESCO Global Action Plan

UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

TABLES, FIGURES AND TEXT BOXES
List of tables

1. Overview of methods used to answer sub-questions.

2. The role of the selected competences in a selection of literature.
3. Sequential mixed methods design.
4. Overview of links in Solomon four group design.
5. Amount of students from different schools in each group.
6. Overview of interviewees and their roles and expertise within CEE.
7. Overview of operationalisation of competences.
8. Classification of concepts into core, affiliated and peripheral concepts for the pictures of the ‘relating
to pictures’ exercise.
9. Methods used for different sub-questions.
10. Overview of interviewees and their roles and expertise within CEE.
11. Explanation of the links from the Solomon four group design and the links (A-G) that will be analysed
in this section.
12. Representation of the three schools in the four groups.
13. Explanation of the colour scheme used for parts I and IV of section 4.4.
14. Descriptives of variables to determine distribution for independent sample tests.
15. Descriptives of variables to determine distribution for paired sample tests.
16. Descriptives for the ‘sequencing’ exercise.
17. Overview of (significant) effects found in links for the ‘sequencing’ exercise.
18. Descriptives for the ‘odd one out’ exercise.
19. Overview of (significant) effects found in links for the ‘odd one out’ exercise.
20. Descriptives for the combination of the ‘sequencing’ and the ‘odd one out’ exercise.
21. Overview of (significant) effects found in links in different parts.
22. Classification of concepts into core, affiliated and peripheral concepts for both of the pictures.
23. Explanation of the colour scheme used for part III of section 4.4.
24. Overview of comparison of percentages between the pre- and post-measurement of group 1 that
noted a certain term when asked if they associated it with the picture of a traffic jam (top half) and the
picture of a cow eating litter (bottom half).
25. Overview of comparison of percentages between the pre- and post-measurement of group 2 that
noted a certain term when asked if they associated it with the picture of a traffic jam (top half) and the
picture of a cow eating litter (bottom half).
26. Overview of comparison of percentages between the post-measurements of group 1 and 2 that noted
a certain term when asked if they associated it with the picture of a traffic jam (top half) and the
picture of a cow eating litter (bottom half).
27. Overview of comparison of percentages between the post-measurements of group 3 and 4 that noted
a certain term when asked if they associated it with the picture of a traffic jam (top half) and the
picture of a cow eating litter (bottom half).
28. Overview of comparison of percentages between the post-measurements of group 1 and 3 that noted
a certain term when asked if they associated it with the picture of a traffic jam (top half) and the
picture of a cow eating litter (bottom half).
29. Overview of comparison of percentages between the post-measurements of group 2 and 4 that noted
a certain term when asked if they associated it with the picture of a traffic jam (top half) and the
picture of a cow eating litter (bottom half).
30. Overview of effects found in links in the ‘relating to pictures’ exercise.

List of figures

1. Timeline of most important global policy documents on ESD.

2. Schematic visualization of the classic approach to environmental education as discussed by Frisk and
Larson.
3. Schematic visualization of competence approach as used by the OECD PISA.
4. Example of causal loop diagram of a dynamic process.
5. Conceptual framework explaining the process of increased systems thinking skills.
6. Research framework as a flow chart.
7. Visual representation of Solomon’s four group design.
8. Photo of the mystery exercise.
9. Photo of the mystery exercise.
10. Photo of the mystery exercise.
11. Photo of the mystery exercise.
12. Example of the ‘Making links’ exercise in the measurement survey.
13. Example of ‘the odd one out’ exercise in the measurement survey.
14. Example of ‘sequencing’ exercise in the measurement survey.
15. Example of the ‘relating to pictures’ exercise in the measurement survey.
16. Example of the ‘looking forward’ exercise in the measurement survey.
17. Coding structure used in the analysis of semi-structured interviews.
18. Visual representation of four groups out of the Solomon four group design and the links (A-G) that will
be analysed in this section.
19. T-test results for the total scores of the questions of the ‘sequencing’ exercise.
20. Results of analysis of total scores of questions in ‘odd one out’ exercise.
21. Results of analysis of the combination of scores in the ‘sequencing’ and the ‘odd one out’ exercise.
22. Visual representation of four groups out of the Solomon four group design and the links (A-G) that
have been reviewed in this section.
23. Photo of a traffic jam given in the ‘relating to pictures’ exercise.
24. Photo of a littered street given in the ‘relating to pictures’ exercise.
25. Bar charts representing the amount of times the groups mentioned a certain term in the traffic jam
photo of the exercise ‘relating to pictures’.
26. Bar charts representing the amount of times the groups mentioned a certain term in the littered street
photo of the exercise ‘relating to pictures’.
27. Visual representation of four groups out of the Solomon four group design and the links (A-G) that will
be analysed in this section.

List of text boxes

1. Essential characteristics of ESD as defined in the preparation of the DESD.

2. ESD in the SDGs.
3. Fragments from Gandhi’s speech in Stockholm.
4. Definitions of competences.
5. Broad aims of education and guiding principles for curriculum development taken from National
Curriculum Framework 2005.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 5

Preface .......................................................................................................................................................... 6

List of acronyms ............................................................................................................................................ 7

List of tables, figures and text boxes .............................................................................................................. 8

Table of contents .......................................................................................................................................... 10

1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................... 14

1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 14

1.2 Problem definition and knowledge gap ...................................................................................................... 16

1.3 Research objective ...................................................................................................................................... 16

1.4 Central research question and sub-questions ............................................................................................. 17

2. Background and theoretical framework ................................................................................................................. 19

2.1 Education for Sustainable Development ..................................................................................................... 19

ESD in global policy ........................................................................................................................................ 19

Education and sustainability in India ............................................................................................................. 22

2.2 Systems thinking and other sustainability competences. ........................................................................... 25

The competence approach ............................................................................................................................ 25

Systems thinking ........................................................................................................................................... 27

2.3 Conceptual framework ................................................................................................................................ 31

3. Methodology and justification ............................................................................................................................... 34

3.1 Research strategy ........................................................................................................................................ 34

3.2 Data collection ............................................................................................................................................. 34

Experiment .................................................................................................................................................... 35

Semi-structured interviews ........................................................................................................................... 39

(Non-)participatory observation ................................................................................................................... 40

3.3 Operationalisation ....................................................................................................................................... 40

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 Linking SDGs .................................................................................................................................................. 42

The odd one out ............................................................................................................................................ 43

Sequencing .................................................................................................................................................... 44

Relating to pictures ....................................................................................................................................... 44

Looking forward ............................................................................................................................................ 46

Self-reporting ................................................................................................................................................ 46

3.4 Data analysis ................................................................................................................................................ 47

3.5 Reliability, validity and suitability ................................................................................................................ 48

Reliability ....................................................................................................................................................... 48

Validity ........................................................................................................................................................... 48

Suitability ....................................................................................................................................................... 49

4. Results ................................................................................................................................................................... 51

4.1 The current state of ESD in Ahmedabad and Gujarat ................................................................................. 51

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) .................................................................................................. 52

Incidental versus structural EE/ESD .............................................................................................................. 54

The teacher ................................................................................................................................................... 55

Assessment .................................................................................................................................................... 56

The textbook ................................................................................................................................................. 57

Differences within India, Gujarat and Ahmedabad ....................................................................................... 58

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 59

4.2 Sustainability competences for high school students ................................................................................. 60

Definition and purpose of ESD ...................................................................................................................... 60

Key competences for ESD .............................................................................................................................. 62

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 62

4.3 Role of systems thinking .............................................................................................................................. 63

Systems thinking in ESD ................................................................................................................................ 63

Systems thinking to develop competences ................................................................................................... 64

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 65

4.4 The impact of increased systems thinking skills on sustainability competences ........................................ 66

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 Groups ........................................................................................................................................................... 66

Part I and IV – ‘Sequencing’ and ‘the odd one out’) ...................................................................................... 68

Part III – ‘Relating to pictures’ ....................................................................................................................... 76

5. Discussion ............................................................................................................................................................. 86

Interpretation of results ................................................................................................................................ 86

Key findings ................................................................................................................................................... 87

Limitations of research .................................................................................................................................. 87

Theoretical implications ................................................................................................................................ 88

6. Conclusion and recommendations ......................................................................................................................... 91

Methodological recommendations ............................................................................................................... 91

Other recommendations ............................................................................................................................... 92

References ................................................................................................................................................... 93

Appendices ................................................................................................................................................... 98

Annex 1 – Measurement survey ...................................................................................................................... 99

Annex 2 – Mystery exercise ........................................................................................................................... 105

Annex 3 – Interview guide ............................................................................................................................. 112

Annex 4 – Overview of school visits ............................................................................................................... 114

Annex 5 – Fragments field work diary ............................................................................................................ 115

Annex 6 – Summary literature review ........................................................................................................... 120

Annex 7 – Interview transcripts ..................................................................................................................... 131

Annex 8 – Data ‘relating to pictures’ exercise ................................................................................................ 174

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