Evaluating System Dynamics as a Tool for Teaching History

History has been traditionally taught as apresentation of isolated facts, which are hardlyrelated by students. Students are seldom encouragedto transfer what they learn at school to interpretdifferent happenings over time. Thus, they lackunderstanding of history's relevance. Theconventional history teaching method appears to beunlikely to prepare students to face the challengesof modern society. An improvement in the teachingmethod is then required. The System Dynamics (SD) approach seems to be anattractive method to teach history mainly becauserelationships between different events that madehistory unfold can be clearly described through theSD approach. SD may be, then, useful for students tounderstand why and how history happened. Furthermore,when such understanding is based on SD genericstructures, similar historical phenomena can beunderstood too. Thus, history is seen as a subjectthat crosses time and is related to different issuesalong human conditions. Important assessmentof SD as a tool to teach historyis the main contribution of this book, which is worthto be considered as a building block in theconstruction of a history curriculum based on SD.