From leadership research to district action: Can structure speak for understanding? A dual assessment of systems thinking for sustainability in preservice STEM teachers’ concept maps

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Introduction Structural indicators extracted from concept maps, such as node counts, connection density, and cycle counts, are often used as proxies for systems thinking. However, it remains unclear whether a structurally complex concept map actually reflects deeper semantic understanding of a sustainability system. This study developed the Structural–Semantic Dual Assessment (SSDA) framework as an exploratory tool to examine whether and how structural indicators correspond to semantic understanding. Methods Forty-seven preservice STEM teachers with a geography background completed a concept-mapping task on the evolution of the Lop Nur human–land system. The SSDA framework assessed three dimensions of systems thinking: Network Structuring, Nonlinear Mechanism Deconstruction, and Spatiotemporal Reasoning. For each dimension, graph-theoretic structural indicators were extracted from the maps and compared with expert semantic ratings. We further used correlation analysis, principal component analysis-based structural–semantic profiling, representative case analysis, and a supplementary causal-chain completeness analysis. Results Most participants identified system elements and annotated spatiotemporal information with reasonable consistency, but feedback mechanisms showed a different pattern. Some participants described feedback loops coherently in writing yet drew few or no closed cycles in their maps. The correspondence between structural indicators and semantic scores varied by dimension: structural indicators showed moderate correspondence with spatiotemporal reasoning but almost no correspondence with mechanistic understanding. Cross-classifying structural and semantic scores produced four learner profiles, revealing structural–semantic mismatches in both directions. The supplementary causal-chain completeness analysis further showed that valid mechanism chains depended on both structural support and link validity, especially for development–restoration tensions, feedback relations, and cross-spatiotemporal governance. Discussion These findings indicate that structural indicators alone provide only a partial picture of systems thinking in concept maps. Structural, semantic, and causal-chain evidence are best interpreted side by side and dimension by dimension. As an exploratory framework, SSDA may support preservice STEM teacher education by helping participants develop professional judgment in evaluating systems thinking.

Study methods

The study proceeded in three phases, outlined in Figure 2. The process began with participants completing a concept mapping task built around a sustainability scenario—the evolution of the Lop Nur human–land system—after which all hand-drawn maps were collected and organized as raw data for analysis. From each concept map, structural indicators and semantic scores were then generated separately, guided by the dimensions of the SSDA framework. The two sets of results were then brought together for correlation analysis and typological classification. Representative cases were selected to illustrate how structural and semantic evidence converged or diverged in participants’ concept maps.

Limitations

The findings reported here are based on 47 preservice teachers in a STEM-related discipline working with a single case, the evolution of the Lop Nur human–land system. This design ensured content consistency, but also limited the transferability of the results. As discussed earlier in the Disciplinary Context section, the strong spatiotemporal structure of the Lop Nur case likely contributed to the high performance on Dimension C. Whether the same patterns would hold for sustainability topics with less pronounced spatiotemporal structure, such as food safety, social equity, energy policy trade-offs, or biology-related topics such as ecosystem dynamics and food webs, remains an open question.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Xiaolan Song; Xiangdong Wang; Xiuhua Liang; Jiaqi Li; Li Pan; Linhe Lu. Can structure speak for understanding? A dual assessment of systems thinking for sustainability in preservice STEM teachers’ concept maps. Frontiers in Psychology (2026-07-15). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1846628

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.