The globalizing world is shaped by a dynamic change which carries numerous challenges confronting the global society, such as for instance, poverty, climate change, or migration. Those challenges are characterized by a high degree of factual complexity. However, when dealing with those topics, individuals often tend to rush ahead and not to approach problems adequately given the complexity of the situation. The Club of Rome’s famous report "The Limits to Growth" aptly pointed out that today's solutions are often tomorrow's problems (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972). Individuals can only avoid such short-sighted solutions and successfully deal with these challenges if they are able to recognize and understand complex and global relationships. In an education that aims to enable students to do just that, the promotion of system competence must therefore be central. (Rost, 2005; Rieckmann, 2017). System competence means the ability to understand a complex, socio-ecological area of reality as a system on a local and global level and, on this basis, to make prognoses and take measures for system use and regulation (Mehren, Rempfler, Ulrich-Riedhammer, Buchholz & Hartig, 2016). Socio-ecological areas of reality that are central within the education for sustainable development (ESD) as reflected in numerous publications are (1) climate and climate change, (2) natural resources (especially water and soil), (3) urbanisation and settlement development, (4) production, consumption and (alternative) energy(s), (5) poverty and justice and (6) migration (see for example Rieckmann, 2017; European Commission, 2015). Furthermore, different aspects of multi-perspectivity play a central role for system competence in the field of ESD: (1) Considering social, ecological, economic and political or cultural dimensions, (2) systematically switching between local and global approaches and (3) taking into account the temporal perspective of intergenerational justice.

Our research project aims at developing a compact, economic instrument for measuring system competence that can be used as an indicator in the field of ESD. The test instrument should be usable in various fields such as international educational reporting, basic research or the evaluation of ESD measures in practice.

The development of the system competence measure comprises the following steps: The first step is the item development. Firstly, question stems that focus on crucial themes of ESD are developed. Secondly, items in the sense of different levels of socio-ecological system understanding are developed for each of the question stems. Expert judgements are included for the question stems as well as for the items in order to validate both content-related and conceptual requirements. Additionally, a one-day workshop with teachers of subjects that are primarily concerned with ESD is planned to ensure a transdisciplinary orientation and to be close to school practice. The developed items are then tested in a cognitive laboratory. In a cognitive walk-through, the task developers first specify the processes and steps that are likely to be necessary for a task solution. This can already provide indications of difficulties in understanding. The students are then encouraged to think aloud while working on the items. Furthermore, answers are probed and question and item texts are paraphrased. This is expected to provide insights into the understanding of the items, into solution strategies and particular difficulties. Subsequently, in the framework of the quantitative piloting, the tasks are tested with a sample of N = 400 students (16 classes) in order to determine the psychometric properties of the items for the subsequent item selection and the conformity to the one-dimensional Rasch model. Finally, the calibration study (N = 1000 students; 40 classes) should provide the basis for a precise estimation of psychometric parameters of the final test version - in particular (1) the difficulties of the items and (2) the thresholds between the competence levels. These form the basis for future applications of the test in small studies or in practical contexts. Based on our preliminary work on modeling system competence, we expect the one-dimensional Rasch model to capture well the essential diagnostic information of the test.

Once these development steps have been completed, we would like to present a compact, easy to interpret and yet reliable and valid instrument to measure system competence in the field of ESD. These characteristics of the indicator also enable it to be included into international educational monitoring reports and make it suitable for evaluating ESD measures. With this possibility of evaluating the success of such measures, we hope to contribute to a more effective promotion of system competence within the framework of ESD.

European comission (2015). HORIZON 2020. The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/societal-challenges (accessed 17 January 2019). Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J. & Behrens III, W. W. (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. Mehren, R., Rempfler, A., Buchholz, J., Hartig, J., & Ulrich‐Riedhammer, E. M. (2018). System competence modelling: Theoretical foundation and empirical validation of a model involving natural, social and human‐environment systems. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 55(5), 685-711. Rieckmann, M. (2017). Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives. UNESCO Publishing. Rost, J. (2005). Messung von Kompetenzen Globalen Lernens [Measurement of Competences in Global Learning]. Zeitschrift für internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik, 28(2), 19-25.