Learning to Live Well With Places: Socio‐Ecological Systems Modeling for Just and Sustainable Futures

Abstract

This paper advances Systems Modeling for Just and Sustainable Futures (SMJSF) as a conceptual framework for ethical and epistemic socio‐ecological modeling in field‐based science education. Emerging from a decade of participatory, design‐based research co‐designed with youth, families, educators, and researchers within the Learning in Places project, we argue that SMJSF is both a representational activity and a relational process through which learners make sense of and act within the intertwined systems that sustain life. The framework conceptualizes modeling as an iterative, place‐responsive practice organized around four interrelated dimensions (iteration, perspective‐taking, positioning humans as a part of  ecological systems, and axiological engagement) that together connect scientific reasoning with ethical deliberation and collective change‐making. We illustrate how this approach supports learners in reasoning across scales, taking human and more‐than‐human perspectives, and engaging the values and power relations that shape decisions about place in times of social and ecological change. Drawing on composite examples from practice, we describe how SMJSF can cultivate the attention, responsibility, and ethical capacities that support learners in learning to live well with the rest of the natural world.