“You’re Not Meant to Learn Alone”: A Second Grade Teacher’s High‑Leverage Pedagogical Practices Driven by Systems Thinking

Abstract This study focuses on one urban, public, Title I second grade classroom of English learners in which the teacher and students investigated human kindness. The teacher, Jasmine, employed a systems thinking approach (e.g., Meadows & Wright, 2008) to engage her students. Using a theoretical framework of systemic sustainability education (Davis et al., 2015), we identified three high‑impact pedagogical practices used by Jasmine. These included: (1) orienting the children’s attention; (2) structuring opportunities for recursive elaboration of cognitive concepts; and (3) attending to options that are generated by the group. Using a narrative inquiry approach (Schaafsma & Vinz, 2011), we describe how the teacher’s use of these techniques engaged students in multidimensional literacy experiences that served to enhance their understanding. Jasmine’s pedagogy: (1) broadened orientations toward knowledge; (2) cultivated complex thinkers; and (3) engaged students in meaningful social literacy practices as the class collectively recognized interdependence and interconnectedness within a system of kindness (Capra & Luisi, 2014).