[Case Study: US Elementary Education] Little kids, complex thinking: Systems thinking in elementary PBL

Can Little Kids Do “Complex Systems Thinking”?

What comes to mind when you hear the term "Systems Thinking"? Perhaps you envision complex computer modeling, corporate strategy meetings, or advanced university research. But would you believe it if I told you that kindergarteners and elementary students are using these very same tools to resolve playground conflicts, analyze story plots, and co-create their own classroom rules?

On February 26, the SDS Pre-College SIG hosted a webinar titled Systems Thinking for Young Learners: A Practical Introduction. In that session, Sara Stewart from Borton Elementary Magnet School delivered a presentation that challenged many of our assumptions. Her talk was titled "Little Kids, Complex Thinking: Systems Thinking in Elementary PBL."

Borton Elementary, located in Tucson, Arizona, has made Project-Based Learning (PBL) and systems thinking part of its educational DNA. In this blog series, I will share concrete classroom examples of how Borton Magnet uses systems thinking—not as a “dessert” served at the end of the curriculum, but as the main course: a pedagogy that awakens student ownership and makes thinking visible.

Reference (APA 7th):
Stewart, Sara (2026, February 26). Little kids, complex thinking: Systems thinking in elementary PBL [Webinar presentation]. Systems Thinking for Young Learners: A Practical Introduction (SDS Pre-College SIG February Webinar).

There is one detail on the very first slide that is worth noticing.

Sara Stewart’s title—“Magnet Coordinator”—may feel unfamiliar. To understand what it means, I first need a quick introduction to magnet schools in the United States.

1. What is a Magnet School?

A magnet school is a type of U.S. public school designed to “attract” students—much like a magnet attracts metal—by offering a specialized theme or program. Instead of serving only a single neighborhood zone, magnet schools often draw students from across a district (and sometimes beyond). Their themes vary widely: STEM, arts, world languages, International Baccalaureate, Project-Based Learning (PBL), and more.

In this context, Borton Elementary Magnet School is a magnet school whose defining theme includes Project-Based Learning (PBL) and systems thinking.

2. What Does a Magnet Coordinator Do?

Sara Stewart’s role as a Magnet Coordinator is not purely administrative. In most magnet schools, this role functions as a combination of program lead and instructional expert—someone responsible for ensuring the school’s theme is not just a slogan but a lived reality across classrooms.

In practical terms, a Magnet Coordinator typically:

• supports teachers in designing lessons aligned with the school’s theme,
• provides instructional coaching and professional development,
• helps ensure consistency and quality across grade levels, and
• communicates the program’s vision to families and the wider community.

Why This Matters for Interpreting Sara’s Talk

This is why Sara Stewart’s webinar should be read as more than a collection of “good activities.” Her presentation reflects the hard-won insights of someone who has been leading teachers, shaping classroom practice, and solving real implementation problems in a school-wide setting.

In other words, what she shared was not a theoretical research summary. It was a condensed report from the field—an accumulation of practical experience in making systems thinking work with young learners.

The slide begins with a question:

“How can systems thinking empower students to take ownership of their learning in PBL?”

The key word here is ownership. Sara’s point is not simply that “kids learned a tool.” It is a declaration that systems thinking can function as a classroom operating system—a way to design learning so that students truly own it.

For PBL to work, students must take the driving question as their question. Systems thinking, Sara argues, is a catalyst that makes that process visible, builds connections, and supports growth. In fact, she emphasizes that systems thinking can be especially powerful for young learners because it helps them become agents of their own learning.

She highlights four major benefits.

1) Making invisible thinking visible (Thinking Visible)

Young children’s ideas can fade quickly when they are only spoken words. Systems thinking tools—loops, stock–flow diagrams, and other visual structures—act as external memory for thinking. For teachers, this makes assessment clearer. For students, it makes revision possible.

2) Building meaningful connections

The heart of PBL is not a list of facts, but an organization of relationships. Systems thinking does not stop at simple cause-and-effect links. It helps students bundle events into structures—patterns, accumulation, and feedback. A simple question like, “How does A affect B?” invites children to discover context and connection on their own.

3) Growing literacy and reasoning together

This point is especially important. Many educators assume “systems thinking = science or math.” Surprisingly, systems thinking can also strengthen reading and writing. When students analyze and organize a story’s flow using systems tools, they become deeper readers and more logical writers. A strong piece of writing depends on recognizing the curve of change—tension, development, turning points—which later connects naturally to BOTg in the next slides.

4) Increasing engagement (Engagement)

This is not “fun” in a superficial sense. Sara describes engagement as the outcome of agency. Instead of memorizing someone else’s answer, students design their own thinking and model it. Once students gain ownership, their energy changes. When they turn their thinking into a diagram and generate new questions from it, the project stops feeling like homework and becomes their work.

In the end, systems thinking is not an intimidating academic subject. It becomes one of the most powerful tools young learners can use to learn better—and think more deeply. 

PBL Is Not the Dessert—It’s the Main Course

In this slide, Sara makes a clear declaration: PBL is not an occasional project you do “when there’s time.” It is the lesson itself—the main course, not the dessert.

The diagram on the right reinforces the point. PBL is not a linear, one-and-done sequence. It is a learning loop with revision built in. Students revise not only when they produce final products but also while they build knowledge and skills.

What is especially interesting here is that revision functions like a reinforcing feedback loop. As students revise, their work improves. As their work improves, they generate better questions. Better questions lead to deeper inquiry—and deeper inquiry creates even more opportunities for meaningful revision.

In other words, revision is not a “correction step” at the end. It is the engine driving growth throughout the project.

When I saw the photo on the right, I literally thought, Of course.
I had always believed this step was important—but I had never imagined displaying it this boldly.

That wall is a gallery of what I would call “thought clouds.” You could also call them speech bubbles. The brilliance is not the shape of the paper. The brilliance is what the display accomplishes: it makes students instantly accept a simple but powerful truth—everyone has a different “cloud” of thinking. In other words, mental models are real, diverse, and worth examining. As scaffolding, it is almost perfect.

Sara designs the project launch with a clear principle:

“Before instruction begins, students generate their own thinking.”

The tool she uses is the Mental Model—but she does not treat it as an abstract theory. She makes it usable for young children with one simple sentence frame:

Prompt: “When I think of ___, I see …”

Sara Stewart does not begin by pouring in knowledge. She begins by asking. Children externalize their inner maps through drawings and words. One child sketches sweet fruit; another draws deep roots underground. And the class proceeds through a simple, repeatable routine.

A three-step operating routine

1) Partner comparison

When students compare mental models with a partner, a new question naturally appears:
“What did I miss?”

“Wait—my tree only has apples, but yours has roots!”

This momentary realization—a gap in understanding—is a powerful leverage point. The moment students recognize the boundary of their own thinking, real learning begins.

2) Whole-group synthesis → generating NTKQ

Next, the class brings their ideas together to generate Need-To-Know Questions (NTKQ)—the questions that will guide the next phase of inquiry and knowledge-building.

Isn’t that remarkable? Need-to-know questions.
It means students are not simply receiving a curriculum—they are helping define what they need to learn.

3) Pre- and post-assessment

Finally, students revisit their mental models before and after the project to see how their thinking has changed.

And here is the key move: these mental models do not disappear. They remain on the wall. As students read, explore, and experiment, they add new insights back onto their original thinking. Knowledge is no longer something to memorize. It becomes something to co-construct, like building a shared picture over time.

In this sense, systems thinking becomes a “growth board” for children: it helps them stop fearing what they don’t know, and instead use one another’s thinking as stepping stones toward deeper understanding.

Two Picture Books Used as Classroom Cases

Sara introduces two picture books that are widely used in Western classrooms when teaching themes such as perseverance, challenge, and invention (maker thinking).

1) Jabari Tries (Jabari’s Challenge)

Author: Gaia Cornwall

Story (brief):
Jabari decides to build a “flying device” in his backyard. But things do not go as planned. The machine won’t fly—it keeps crashing. Jabari gets angry and frustrated and finally blurts out, “I’m done!” At that moment, his father steps in and talks with him about perseverance. With his father’s guidance and support—along with help from his younger sister (teamwork)—Jabari tries again and eventually completes his invention.

Good variables for a BOTg:
Jabari’s confidence, frustration, and the quality of each attempt.

2) Izzy Gizmo and the Invention Convention (Izzy Gizmo and the Invention Contest)

Author: Pip Jones

Story (brief):
Izzy Gizmo is a young inventor who loves fixing and making things. This time, she enters an invention contest. While her rivals’ inventions look perfect, Izzy’s keeps malfunctioning. She becomes so upset that she wants to throw everything away. But with encouragement from people around her, she looks again at her “failed” parts. In the end, she recombines what didn’t work and creates a surprising invention that no one expected.

Good variables for a BOTg:
Izzy’s motivation, problem-solving progress, and teamwork/support.

The point is not “reading”—it is reading the curve of change with BOTg

The real design move here is not a reading activity. It is using BOTg to help children read the protagonist’s curve of change. Good stories almost always follow a pattern—conflict, frustration, trying again, turning points, and resolution. BOTg makes that structure something children can draw with their own hands.

Teaching “growth mindset” to elementary students is not easy. But at Borton, BOTg (a behavior-over-time graph) translates this abstract idea into the language of young learners.

I love the title of this slide:

“Building Growth Mindset with BOTg in a Perseverance Project.”

Instead of giving children moral lectures about perseverance, the classroom helps them embody perseverance through stories—by looking at change over time.

What students began to notice

Sara highlights several shifts in student thinking:

1) Change over time with a variable

Realizing that feelings and confidence change over time is already the beginning of systems thinking.

2) Causal relations (between …)

Students start asking: “Why did it drop?” and “What made it rise again?”

3) A rollercoaster line before incremental increase

This is the key insight. Growth (skill and confidence) does not rise in a straight line. It moves up and down like a rollercoaster, and only then begins to increase gradually over time. Growth mindset is not a slogan—it emerges from recognizing patterns.

4) Resolution

The ending is not a sudden miracle. Students learn to see resolution as the result of the earlier curve—trying, failing, and trying again.

Sara’s message is simple: instead of lecturing children with “Don’t give up,” make the process of perseverance itself visible—by drawing it.

In this slide, Sara takes the idea one step further.

BOTg does not end with “insight.”
It becomes a tool that triggers critique and revision.

In other words, BOTg is not merely a tool for comforting students emotionally. It is a mechanism that activates an improvement loop in learning.

If I translate the text on the right side of the slide into plain language, it means something like this:

BOTg is powerful in a perseverance project because it makes emotional and developmental processes visible. When students graph levels such as frustration, perseverance, and confidence over time, they begin to see learning not as a fixed trait (“I’m good at this / I’m not good at this”), but as a process that unfolds over time.

This is the part I find especially important.

Instead of making an identity judgment—“I’m not good at this”—children can shift toward a structural interpretation:
“Oh, this is the part where my curve goes down.”

The photo on this slide is not simply a display of student work. It functions as a shared map of growth patterns for the whole class. When students’ BOTg graphs are posted on the wall, the classroom focus can shift away from “Who did better?” toward “What patterns keep repeating, and what actually helped?”

Doesn’t this also change the nature of critique? Critique no longer targets the student as a person. It targets the process—the pattern. And when critique becomes safer, revision becomes more natural.

Would you agree?

One of the hardest challenges in writing instruction is helping students look at their own writing objectively—and revise it. At Borton, Sara describes a surprisingly effective solution: using BOTg as a visual tool.

“A straight line on a graph is more powerful than a teacher’s critique.”

In the image, students are seriously examining their own narratives by drawing a BOTg of the story’s progression. One student graphed a piece about “honesty,” and the line came out almost perfectly flat—no change from beginning to end. In that moment, the student exclaimed:

“My graph is a straight line! That means my story isn’t interesting—so I need to rewrite it!”

Think about how powerful that is. Instead of a teacher repeating “Add conflict!” a hundred times, the student sees the structural problem in their own work and chooses revision on their own.

That is what makes this scene beautiful. The target of critique is not the student’s ability. It is the pattern on the page—the visible structure. Critique stops being an attack and becomes a shared inquiry: How can we turn a flat line into a roller coaster?

Here, a systems thinking tool functions as a true “metacognitive mirror”—helping children reflect on their thinking and improve it, by their own initiative.

This is a concrete classroom example.

Collaboration is a core ingredient of Project-Based Learning (PBL). But simply telling children, “Work together,” is not enough. At this point, Sara Stewart introduces a classic systems thinking tool: the stock–flow diagram. She turns the invisible “energy” of teamwork into something students can see—like water in a bathtub.

1) A reservoir for teamwork (Stock)

Students draw a large “bathtub” labeled Teamwork on a big sheet of paper. Then they work together to define what fills this reservoir (inflows) and what drains it (outflows), through serious discussion and negotiation.

2) What fills teamwork, and what drains it?

Inflow examples:

• listening until a teammate finishes speaking

• following the agreed plan

• doing your part and honoring your role

Outflow examples:

• interrupting others and dominating the conversation

• blaming one another and arguing

3) A mirror for the team—and a tool for self-regulation

Sara describes this model as a mirror: it reflects the current state of the team. When conflict arises during a project, instead of the teacher stepping in to scold students, the team can gather around the diagram and regulate itself:

“Our teamwork bathtub is getting low. We’ve had too much of that outflow—interrupting. Let’s increase the inflow—listening.”

This is the key idea: teamwork does not emerge from slogans like “Be nice.” Teamwork is a stock. Small acts of disrespect, interruptions, or failure to carry out roles become outflows that drain it. Keeping agreements, listening, and sharing responsibilities become inflows that build it. A stock–flow diagram makes this accumulation structure visible, turning the team from something students merely feel into something they can actually design and improve.

In that sense, stock–flow thinking transforms “collaboration”—often taught as a moral value—into an engineering skill that students can manage, monitor, and strengthen over time.

Systems thinking tools—BOTg, stocks and flows, and causal loop diagrams, among others—shine during public presentations as well. They change the game from a “who speaks better” contest to an explanation that makes structure visible.

As a result, these visual tools shift what counts as a strong presentation. The focus moves away from the length or fluency of a student’s speech and toward the clarity of the underlying structure. With a single diagram, an audience can often grasp—quickly and to a substantial degree—how key variables are connected and how they changed over time.

Let me wrap up Sara Stewart’s presentation.

Systems thinking is not an add-on. It is pedagogy itself.
It is the engine running beneath every moment of learning.

Systems thinking is not a decorative tool used to “dress up” one phase of a project. It is a language of thinking—and a practical methodology—that students use when they generate their own questions (Inquiry), track and reflect on their growth (Reflection), join forces with peers (Collaboration), and demonstrate what they have learned (Assessment). That is why, at Sara Stewart’s school, systems thinking is not taught as a separate unit.

Sara summarizes four ways they use systems thinking:

1) An inquiry structure (Inquiry structure)

It provides the backbone of PBL—question → investigation → products.
This is where students build Need-To-Know Questions (NTKQ) and shape the path of inquiry.

2) A reflection mechanism (Reflection mechanism)

Using BOTg, students make emotions, growth, and learning processes visible—so they can notice, adjust, and self-regulate.
It helps them move from “I’m not good at this” to “This is the part where my curve goes down.”

3) A collaboration framework (Collaboration framework)

Through stock–flow thinking, competencies like teamwork become accumulation structures that students can monitor and improve.
Collaboration shifts from a moral slogan to something that can be designed.

4) An assessment lens (Assessment lens)

Assessment is not only about whether students got the “right answer.” It also examines how their thinking changed and how clearly they can explain structure.
Mental models (pre/post), BOTg (process), and diagrams (accountability for explanations) all become assessment evidence.

Sara Stewart’s case shows—vividly—how systems thinking can nurture young learners into agents who not only handle complexity, but learn to enjoy complex thinking as active, responsible citizens.