LENScience
Conversations about complex issues
Learning activities may be downloaded, copied and reproduced free of charge for teaching purposes.
These resources are intended to support exploration of evidence associated with life-course health and wellbeing while understanding some of the mechanisms driving the complexity and dynamic behaviour of the food system at individual and societal levels.
Activity Title |
Rationale |
Description of activity |
Approximate time |
Links to activities |
| Thinking about our diet and future health | Provocation statements stimulate discussion about the long-term impacts of different food choices. These can be revisited to discuss and assess shifts in understanding. |
Students post answers to a simple survey, followed by discussion of responses. | 15-20 minutes |
Thinking about our diet and our future health
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| Modelling a complex system | A demonstration of a complex system, made up of many parts, where all parts work together and each impacts the other. Relationships are dynamic and are not immediately observable. | Students move around in a space to model a complex system, followed by discussion. | 10 minutes | Creating a complex system |
| Life stories | Stories illustrate how components in a complex system can act in unpredictable or unanticipated ways. Introduction to feedback loops. |
Stories are shared with students,and students are supported to make up their own stories. | 20-30 minutes | Life stories: Tools for systems thinking - unforseen consequences of actions |
| Food web | Students think about interactions and interrelationships between components of a food web as a complex system. | Questions support students to think about short- and long-term, positive or negative effects of changes within the system. Students make up questions to ask peers. Students are encourged to tell a story about one of the organisims living in the web. |
15-20 minutes | Food web: Tools for systems thinking - interactions and interrelationships |
| What's for breakfast? | Photographs of breakfast foods stimulate discussion about how important changes in complex systems happen over time and have multiple, complex drivers. These changes often go unnoticed unless we investigate and look for patterns. | Students are provided with a range of photographs as visual stimuli. They are invited to discuss their family and social knowledge about changes in breakfast food over different generations. | 30-60 minutes | What's for breakfast: Tools for systems thinking - change over time |
| The DOHaD science story |
UK scientists noticed similarities in patterns of infant mortality at the beginning of the 20th century and rates of heart disease in adults in the 1970s. This observation contributed to a scientific breakthrough about knowledge of nutritional and non-nutritional environmental exposures in early life on growth, development, and health over the life course. This field of research is now known as the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD).
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A science story illustrates the importance of noticing patterns of change over time. Students are told and then discuss the "DOHaD story" - the science of how and why we know about the association between early-life nutrition and life-long wellbeing. |
15-20 minutes |
(Open pdf in Adobe Acrobat to toggle notes on and off)
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| How do I choose? |
Students respond to sets of three related statements describing factors that might influence choices or circumstances associated with breakfast-eating habits.
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Students post answers to a simple survey followed by discussion/critique of survey questions and responses. | 15-20 minutes | What influences food choices? A data gathering activity |
| Healthy lunch cost challenge | Students think about complex variables and influences on food choices. | Students make, cost and eat a healthy lunch, and discuss reasons for why cost might/might not be a factor in accessing and eating a healthy diet. | 30-40 minutes to make, eat and discuss | Healthy lunch cost challenge |
| Influence on food choices | Students are invited to consider the many complex influences on food choices in a small-group brainstorming activity. Students compare their results with the collated results of the wider group and with findings of a study investigating youth attitudes, perceptions and practices related to food choices. | Group work to support students to collect and analyse data from peers which reflect the many complex influences on food choices.
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30 minutes (with extended time for continuing discussion and analysis) |
HAPPY Study classroom resource What factors influence our food choices? Teacher information What factors influence our food choices PowerPoint (with notes)
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| Vicious cycles | Students explore how vicious cycles can sustain unhealthy food environments. Introduction to causal loop diagrams. |
Students work in groups to read articles, discuss and identify variables responsible for increasing or reducing fruit and vegetable consumption. Students are supplied with examples of feedback loops. They are supported to interpret these and reflect on "what drives a system". Students are encouraged to contribute their own examples. |
30 minutes | Systems thinking professional learning and development resource Stuff original article with variables identified
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| Knowing more about complex influences on our future health | Students revisit and assess their learning. | Students revisit the DOHaD survey to assess shifts in thinking and stimulate further discussion. | 10-15 minutes |
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