The author gives three short response question to sixteen of her undergrad geoscience students, whom have varying majors and levels of education, in an attempt to determine if they are thinking linearly or complexly. All but two fail to think complexly. Dr. Raia used her own scoring criteria, culled from multiple resources, to categorize parts of student responses 12 ways, 6 ways in the Linear thinking type, and 6 corresponding ways in the Complex/Systems approach type. Even though the three questions the students responded to were given as both pre & post test, they still generally failed to attribute complex/Systems type of analysis in their answers.
The first question showed a hypothetical marine strat sequence and asked them to describe the events that caused it. Rather than reference plate tectonics and the movement of the part of the plate in question into different depositional environments, the students though there was at one time ridge (or just a basalt supplying volcano for some students), and then later a volcanic island (which provided ash and sands). Raia felt that the responses, aside from being wrong, showed that the students could only think up 'accidental' causes, not driving forces that aren't specifically written out in the column itself (iow exegent forces).
In the second question they were asked to describe glaciations in New York and their causes; they didn't talk about Milankovitch scale changes or ocean circulation changes. A bunch of them thought she meant 'glaciers', and they just tried to diagram how glaciers move. Others felt that a comet or meteor struck the Earth and tilted its axis, another that 'something' moved the Earth further away from the Sun (in fact they cited 'god' as having done that!!). At least they recognized that changes in the Earth's tilt and orbit can drive climate change. But since the concern here is how they are thinking, that doesn't really offer any reassurances. Those responses still show that they are looking at accidental causes or intelligently directed causes, so again no complex thinking/analysis.
The last question was a simple one, explain why geese fly in a V formation. Most students thought that either a lead goose directed the others or that the goose genes directed them. Some of the students even specifically said that it was the King Goose that directed them, and one student was quick to point out that a Leader, though not necessarily a male, directed them. Funny that she was able to point that out, but still not think about real causes. Two students did realize that it had something to do with air dynamics and ease of flying (c.f. 'drafting'). Raia notes that these same two students were answered the original question by referencing plate motion, away from spreading centers and torwards a subduction zone, AND that these two students were amoung the least educated in the group (they had met the prerequisites, but had no advanced classes). In terms of complex thinking, the students generally didn't consider that properties the whole emerge from actions of the parts, they felt that there had to be a leader, whether a goosey Malik Taus or "the genes", and that they also importantly glossed over many connecting levels by jumping from genes, which code for proteins, to position within the flock.
Dr. Raia concludes by making some comments on the import of complex thinking in relation to evolution education and the environment. With particular respect to evolution, since there is no 'leader', no King Goose directing things, Dr. Raia speculates that non-complex thinking, the linear thinking common to even upper classmen, pre-determines that they will have a particularly difficult time and end up with poor overall understanding.
That last point is particularly interesting, especially because Complex Thinking seems like it can very easily fit into a evolutionary curriculum. Raia defines complex thinking as havin a few characteristics, such as: the recognition of mutual interactions between components, which to me sounds like genes operating on and being influenced by the genome; distinguishing between micro and macro levels, just like micro evolution within a species and speciation; and emergent properties, which could work in as something like Gould's ideas of higher hierarchical levels in the structure of evolutionary theory. Emergent properties ala complex systems also makes me think of the shape of a cladogram. We have the individual species as the parts, operating under their own 'atomic laws', their particular particle properties, but then there is the branching pattern of the whole cladogram emerging out of it. I think that the contingence factor here, the effect of fairly random or at least non-'Darwinian' events on the pattern of extinction and radiation, actually strengthens teaching this as a 'complex system'.
