Evaluating System Dynamics as a Tool for Teaching History

History has been traditionally taught as apresentation of isolated facts, which are hardlyrelated by students. Students are seldom encouragedto transfer what they learn at school to interpretdifferent happenings over time. Thus, they lackunderstanding of history's relevance. Theconventional history teaching method appears to beunlikely to prepare students to face the challengesof modern society. An improvement in the teachingmethod is then required.The System Dynamics (SD) approach seems to be anattractive method to teach history mainly becauserelationships between different events that madehistory unfold can be clearly described through theSD approach. SD may be, then, useful for students tounderstand why and how history happened. Furthermore,when such understanding is based on SD genericstructures, similar historical phenomena can beunderstood too. Thus, history is seen as a subjectthat crosses time and is related to different issuesalong human conditions.Important assessment of SD as a tool to teach historyis the main contribution of this book, which is worthto be considered as a building block in theconstruction of a history curriculum based on SD.

Autorentext

Margarita Cruz was born in Colombia in 1982. Encouraged by a passion for research she studied Management Engineering and then, moved to Norway where she received a Mphil. degree in System Dynamics (SD) from the University of Bergen. Her Master thesis -giving rise to this book- was Barry Richmond prize-winner in the SD Conference in USA, 2007.

Klappentext
History has been traditionally taught as a presentation of isolated facts, which are hardly related by students. Students are seldom encouraged to transfer what they learn at school to interpret different happenings over time. Thus, they lack understanding of history's relevance. The conventional history teaching method appears to be unlikely to prepare students to face the challenges of modern society. An improvement in the teaching method is then required. The System Dynamics (SD) approach seems to be an attractive method to teach history mainly because relationships between different events that made history unfold can be clearly described through the SD approach. SD may be, then, useful for students to understand why and how history happened. Furthermore, when such understanding is based on SD generic structures, similar historical phenomena can be understood too. Thus, history is seen as a subject that crosses time and is related to different issues along human conditions. Important assessment of SD as a tool to teach history is the main contribution of this book, which is worth to be considered as a building block in the construction of a history curriculum based on SD.