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During recent decades, there has been a recognition of the importance of understanding the behavior of dynamic systems: how systems of many interacting elements change and evolve over time and how global phenomena can arise from local interactions of these elements. New research projects on chaos, self-organization, adaptive systems, nonlinear dynamics, and artificial life are all part of this growing interest in systems dynamics. The interest has spread from the scientific community to popular culture, with the publication of general-interest books about research into dynamic systems (e.g., Gleick, 1987; Waldrop, 1992; Gell-Mann, 1994; Kelly, 1994; Roetzheim, 1994; Holland, 1995; Kauffman, 1995).
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The study of dynamic systems is not just a new research tool or new area of study for scientists. The study of dynamic systems stands as a new form of literacy for all, a new way of describing, viewing, and symbolizing phenomena in the world. The language of the present mathematics and science curriculum employs static representations. Yet, our world is, of course, constantly changing. This disjunct between the world of dynamic experience and the world of static school representations stands as one source of student alienation from the current curriculum. The theoretical and computer-based tools arising out of the study of dynamic systems can describe and display the changing phenomena of science and the everyday world.
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