Balancing Bathtubs in Math Class

What of the knowledge that is required to understand dynamic systems is covered by the traditional school math curriculum? In this study, the Booth Sweeney and Sterman (2000) bathtub tasks and the Jensen and Brehmer (2003) rabbits-and-foxes task were dissected into aspects. Questionnaires with tasks tapping into the identified aspects were administered to first-semester university engineering students and hypotheses were formulated concerning their performance, based on an analysis of the high school mathematics curriculum. The results largely conformed to the expectations. However, many participants misunderstood the questions addressing ability to perform control operation, which is required by the rabbitsand-foxes task. This is something that is not taught in schools, and we do not know what questions to ask because we know too little about how people think about control. We would also need to test the tasks with different participant groups, to learn about what aspects are learnt under what circumstances.