engleski

Contribution of the Knowledge Competitions in Education related to Systems Science

Rising complexity of the societies brings about the need for rising the awareness and competences of general population in dealing with that complexity in a satisfactory way. This article discusses possible ways of contributing to the enhancement of public understanding of systems science: formal education conducted by higher education institutions or by schools, informal education conducted by professional societies and different other types of institutions, knowledge competitions, art projects, other interdisciplinary projects, public presentations, popularly written magazines, etc. The possible ways differ in their duration, thoroughness of participants’ preparation and the percentage of the population involvement. These characteristics influence the goals that can be achieved as well as the topics that can be offered to public.The emphasis is in this article put onto the formal, class-based education of pupils. It has twofold purpose in serving the stated need for dealing with the complexity of the contemporary societies. On the one hand, among the pupils there are future scholars and researchers of systems, so their earlier involvement in the systems thinking and related disciplines appropriate for their level, seems beneficial for their overall future achievements. On the other hand, pupils which will not continue their education in fields explicitly related to systems science will have some moderate understanding of systems science. They will be more susceptible to team work andto participate in the interdisciplinary projects in which systems science experts will be included. That applies no matter whether they will become decision makers, opinion makers, managers or other types of employees. Both from the system point of view and from the point of view of existing educational premises, we analyze expected goals and possible realizations of such an education, as realized through a different number of classes. The society is modelled following the tripartite structure of the triple-helix innovation model in such a way that the schools represent one helix while the society, government but also the universities and other higher educational institutions are included within the other two helices. Business Systems Laboratory-Book of AbstractsISBN: 97888908242655thInt. Symposium -Napoli 2018197As a case study, the existing middle school, state-level knowledge competitions “Describing systems”, held annually in Croatia, continuously since 2005, are presented and analyzed. These knowledge competitions originated as an endeavor of a smaller group of teachers and enthusiasts precisely asa result of the analysis how to increase the level of understanding of the systems concepts by general population. Since then, these knowledge competitions have gradually reached the level of the official state competition for middle school pupils. The competition consists of three parts ; the written essay, the exam and the public presentation of the same topic about which the essay was prepared. The exam consists of a simplified general situation followed with the questions about it asked from the point of view of systems science. The attitudes of participants, both the pupils and their teachers as mentors, are almost unanimously favorable for such an educational activity.Guidelines are given for other scholars who could be interested in establishing national or international knowledge competitions about systems thinking and systems related topics.

systems thinking, knowledge competitions, education, triple-helix

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