They also tend to offer solutions that emphasise the importance of processes rather than resources. Younger children tend to see fewer negative outcomes arising from an intervention to improve the environment. This is presumably because they do not consider all of the consequences of an intervention. Younger children sometimes offer more complex solutions to environmental problems than older children. This is possibly because they tend to believe that complex solutions are always better than simple ones.
Younger children propose solutions that involve making processes larger.
Older children thought that making things smaller would be better. The outcome of the study contains important lessons for environmental education. It could enable children both to understand the natural environment and be helped to develop their systems thinking skills. The systems framework applied during the Belfast study can be used to assess the ways children think about the environment. It can also be used to describe the complexity of children's thinking at different stages and to structure curriculum and associated materials.