• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.161-171
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• 2019

The purposes of this study are: 1) to verify the systems thinking factor structure of elementary school students and 2) to compare systems thinking according to their preferred subjects in order to get implications for following research. For the study, pre-tests analyze data from 732 elementary school students using the STMI (Systems Thinking Measuring Instrument) developed by Lee et al. (2013). And exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify the factor structure of the students. Based on the results of the pre-test, the expert group council revised the STMI so that elementary school students could respond to the 5-factor structure that STMI intended. In the post-test, 503 data were analyzed by modified STMI and exploratory factor analysis was performed. The results of the study are as follows: First, in the pre-test, elementary school students responded to the STMI with a test paper consisting of two factors (personal internal factors and personal external factors). The total reliability of the instrument was .932 and the reliability of each factor was analyzed as .857 and .894. Second, for modified STMI, elementary school students responded a 4-factor instrument. Team learning, Shared Vision, and Personal Mastery were derived independent factors, and mental model and systems analysis were derived 1-factor. The total reliability of the instrument was .886 and the reliability of each factor was analyzed as .686 to .864. Finally, a comparison of systems thinking according to preferred subjects showed a significant difference between students who selected science (engineering) group and art (music and physical education). In conclusion, it was confirmed that statistically meaningful results could be obtained using STMI modified by term and sentence structure appropriate for elementary school students, and it is a necessary to study the relation of systems thinking with various student variables such as the preferred subjects.