Problems and Problem Solving
What is a problem?
In common language, a problem is an unpleasant situation, a difficulty.
But in education the first definition in Webster's Dictionary — "a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution" — is a common meaning.
More generally in education, it's useful to define problem broadly — as any situation, in any area of life, where you have an opportunity to make a difference, to make things better — so problem solving is converting an actual current state into a desired future state that is better, so you have "made things better." Whenever you are thinking creatively-and-critically about ways to increase the quality of life (or to avoid a decrease in quality) for yourself and/or for others, you are actively involved in problem solving. Defined in this way, problem solving includes almost everything you do in life.
Problem-Solving Skills — Creative and Critical
An important goal of education is helping students learn how to think more productively while solving problems, by combining creative thinking (to generate ideas) and critical thinking (to evaluate ideas) with accurate knowledge (about the truth of reality). Both modes of thinking (creative & critical) are essential for a well-rounded productive thinker, according to experts in both fields:
Richard Paul (a prominent advocate of CRITICAL THINKING ) says, "Alternative solutions are often not given, they must be generated or thought-up. Critical thinkers must be creative thinkers as well, generating possible solutions in order to find the best one. Very often a problem persists, not because we can't tell which available solution is best, but because the best solution has not yet been made available — no one has thought of it yet."
Patrick Hillis & Gerard Puccio (who focus on CREATIVE THINKING ) describe the combining of creative generation with critical evaluation in a strategy of creative-and-critical Problem Solving that "contains many tools which can be used interchangeably within any of the stages. These tools are selected according to the needs of the task and are either divergent (i.e., used to generate options) or convergent (i.e., used to evaluate options)."
Creative Thinking can be motivated and guided by Creative Thinking: One of the interactions between creative thinking and critical thinking occurs when we use critical Evaluation to motivate and guide creative Generation in a critical - and - creative process of Guided Generation that is Guided Creativity . In my links-page for CREATIVITY you can explore this process in three stages, to better understand how a process of Guided Creativity — explored & recognized by you in Part 1 and then described by me in Part 2 — could be used (as illustrated in Part 3 ) to improve “the party atmosphere” during a dinner you'll be hosting, by improving a relationship.
Education for Problem Solving
By using broad definitions for problem solving and education, we can show students how they already are using productive thinking to solve problems many times every day, whenever they try to “make things better” in some way..
Problem Solving: a problem is an opportunity , in any area of life, to make things better. Whenever a decision-and-action helps you “ make it better ” — when you convert an actual state (in the past) into a more desirable actual state (in the present and/or future) — you are problem solving, and this includes almost everything you do in life, in all areas of life. { You can make things better if you increase quality for any aspect of life, or you maintain quality by reducing a potential decrease of quality. } / design thinking ( when it's broadly defined ) is the productive problem-solving thinking we use to solve problems. We can design (i.e. find, invent, or improve ) a better product, activity, relationship, and/or strategy (in General Design ) and/or (in Science-Design ) explanatory theory. { The editor of this links-page ( Craig Rusbult ) describes problem solving in all areas of life .}
note: To help you decide whether to click a link or avoid it, links highlighted with green or purple go to pages I've written, in my website about Education for Problem Solving or in this website for THINKING SKILLS ( CREATIVE and CRITICAL ) we use to SOLVE PROBLEMS .
Education: In another broad definition, education is learning from life-experiences, learning how to improve, to become more effective in making things better. For example, Maya Angelou – describing an essential difference between past and present – says "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better, " where improved problem solving skills (when "do better" leads to being able to more effectively "make things better") has been a beneficial result of education, of "knowing better" due to learning from life-experiences.
Growth: One of the best ways to learn more effectively is by developing-and-using a better growth mindset so — when you ask yourself “how well am I doing in this area of life?” and honestly self-answer “not well enough” — instead of thinking “not ever” you are thinking “not yet” because you know that your past performance isn't your future performance; and you are confident that in this area of life (and in other areas) you can “grow” by improving your understandings-and-skills, when you invest intelligent effort in your self-education and self-improving. And you can "be an educator" by supporting the self-improving of other people by helping them improve their own growth mindsets. { resources for Growth Mindset }
Growth in Problem-Solving Skills: A main goal of this page is to help educators help students improve their skill in solving problems — by improving their ability to think productively (to more effectively combine creative thinking with critical thinking and accurate knowledge ) — in all areas of their everyday living. {resources: growth mindset for problem solving that is creative-and-critical }
How? You can improve your Education for Problem Solving by creatively-and-critically using general principles & strategies (like those described above & below, and elsewhere) and adapting them to specific situations, customizing them for your students (for their ages, abilities, experiences,...) and teachers, for your community and educational goals.
Promote Productive Thinking:
Build Educational Bridges:
When we show students how they use a similar problem-solving process (with design thinking ) for almost everything they do in life , we can design a wide range of activities that let us build two-way educational bridges:
• from Life into School, building on the experiences of students, to improve confidence: When we help students recognize how they have been using a problem-solving process of design thinking in a wide range of problem-solving situations,... then during a classroom design activity they can think “I have done this before (during design-in-life ) so I can do it again (for design-in-school )” to increase their confidence about learning. They will become more confident that they can (and will) improve the design-thinking skills they have been using (and will be using) to solve problems in life and in school.
• from School into Life, appealing to the hopes of students, to improve motivation: We can show each student how they will be using design thinking for "almost everything they do" in their future life (in their future whole-life, inside & outside school) so the design-thinking skills they are improving in school will transfer from school into life and will help them achieve their personal goals for life . When students want to learn in school because they are learning for life, this will increase their motivations to learn.
Improve Educational Equity:
When we build these bridges (past-to-present from Life into School , and present-to-future from School into Life ) we can improve transfers of learning — in time (past-to-present & present-to-future) and between areas (in school-life & whole-life) for whole-person education — and transitions in attitudes to improve a student's confidence & motivations. This will promote diversity and equity in education by increasing confidence & motivation for a wider range of students, and providing a wider variety of opportunities for learning in school, and for success in school. We want to “open up the options” for all students, so they will say “yes, I can do this” for a wider variety of career-and-life options, in areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) and non-STEM .
This will help us improve diversity-and-equity in education by increasing confidence & motivations for a wider range of students, and providing a wider variety of opportunities for learning in school, and success in school.
Design Curriculum & Instruction:
• DEFINE GOALS for desired outcomes, for ideas-and-skills we want students to learn,
• DESIGN INSTRUCTION with learning activities (and associated teaching activities ) that will provide opportunities for experience with these ideas & skills, and help students learn more from their experiences. {more about Defining Goals and Designing Instruction } {one valuable activity is using a process-of-inquiry to learn principles-for-inquiry }
Problem-Solving Process for Science and Design
We'll look at problem-solving process for science (below) and design ( later ) separately, and for science-and-design together., problem-solving process for science, is there a “scientific method” we have reasons to say....
NO, because there is not a rigid sequence of steps that is used in the same way by all scientists, in all areas of science, at all times, but also...
YES, because expert scientists (and designers) tend to be more effective when they use flexible strategies — analogous to the flexible goal-directed improvising of a hockey player, but not the rigid choreography of a figure skater — to coordinate their thinking-and-actions in productive ways, so they can solve problems more effectively.
Below are some models that can help students understand and do the process of science. We'll begin with simplicity, before moving on to models that are more complex so they can describe the process more completely-and-accurately.
A simple model of science is PHEOC (Problem, Hypothesis, Experiment, Observe, Conclude). When PHEOC, or a similar model, is presented — or is misinterpreted — as a rigid sequence of fixed steps, this can lead to misunderstandings of science, because the real-world process of science is flexible. An assumption that “model = rigidity” is a common criticism of all models-for-process, but this unfortunate stereotype of "rigidity" is not logically justifiable because all models emphasize the flexibility of problem-solving process in real life, and (ideally) in the classroom. If a “step by step” model (like PHEOC or its variations) is interpreted properly and is used wisely, the model can be reasonably accurate and educationally useful. For example,...
A model that is even simpler — the 3-step POE (Predict, Observe, Learn) — has the essentials of scientific logic, and is useful for classroom instruction.
Science Buddies has Steps of the Scientific Method with a flowchart showing options for flexibility of timing. They say, "Even though we show the scientific method as a series of steps, keep in mind that new information or thinking might cause a scientist to back up and repeat steps at any point during the process. A process like the scientific method that involves such backing up and repeating is called an iterative process." And they compare Scientific Method with Engineering Design Process .
Lynn Fancher explains - in The Great SM - that "while science can be done (and often is) following different kinds of protocols, the [typical simplified] description of the scientific method includes some very important features that should lead to understanding some very basic aspects of all scientific practice," including Induction & Deduction and more.
From thoughtco.com, many thoughts to explore in a big website .
Other models for the problem solving process of science are more complex, so they can be more thorough — by including a wider range of factors that actually occur in real-life science, that influence the process of science when it's done by scientists who work as individuals and also as members of their research groups & larger communities — and thus more accurate. For example,
Understanding Science (developed at U.C. Berkeley - about ) describes a broad range of science-influencers, * beyond the core of science: relating evidence and ideas . Because "the process of science is exciting" they want to "give users an inside look at the general principles, methods, and motivations that underlie all of science." You can begin learning in their homepage (with US 101, For Teachers, Resource Library,...) and an interactive flowchart for "How Science Works" that lets you explore with mouse-overs and clicking.
* These factors affect the process of science, and occasionally (at least in the short run) the results of science. To learn more about science-influencers,...
Knowledge Building (developed by Bereiter & Scardamalia, links - history ) describes a human process of socially constructing knowledge.
The Ethics of Science by Henry Bauer — author of Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method (click "look inside") — examines The Knowledge Filter and a Puzzle and Filter Model of "how science really works."
[[ i.o.u. - soon, in mid-June 2021, I'll fix the links in this paragraph.]] Another model that includes a wide range of factors (empirical, social, conceptual) is Integrated Scientific Method by Craig Rusbult, editor of this links-page . Part of my PhD work was developing this model of science, in a unifying synthesis of ideas from scholars in many fields, from scientists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, psychologists, educators, and myself. The model is described in two brief outlines ( early & later ), more thoroughly, in a Basic Overview (with introduction, two visual/verbal representations, and summaries for 9 aspects of Science Process ) and a Detailed Overview (examining the 9 aspects more deeply, with illustrations from history & philosophy of science), and even more deeply in my PhD dissertation (with links to the full text, plus a “world record” Table of Contents, references, a visual history of my diagrams for Science Process & Design Process, and using my integrative model for [[ integrative analysis of instruction ). / Later, I developed a model for the basic logic-and-actions of Science Process in the context of a [[ more general Design Process .
Problem-Solving Process for Design
Because "designing" covers a wide range of activities, we'll look at three kinds of designing..
Engineering Design Process: As with Scientific Method,
a basic process of Engineering Design can be outlined in a brief models-with-steps – 5 5 in cycle 7 in cycle 8 10 3 & 11 . {these pages are produced by ==[later, I'll list their names]}
and it can be examined in more depth: here & here and in some of the models-with-steps (5... 3 & 11), and later .
Problem-Solving Process: also has models-with-steps ( 4 4 5 6 7 ) * and models-without-steps (like the editor's model for Design-Thinking Process ) to describe creative-and-critical thinking strategies that are similar to Engineering Design Process, and are used in a wider range of life — for all problem-solving situations (and these include almost everything we do in life) — not just for engineering. { * these pages are produced by ==}
Design-Thinking Process: uses a similar creative-and-critical process, * but with a focus on human - centered problems & solutions & solving - process and a stronger emphasis on using empathy . (and creativity )
* how similar? This depends on whether we define Design Thinking in ways that are narrow or broad. {the wide scope of problem-solving design thinking } {why do I think broad definitions (for objectives & process) are educationally useful ?}
Education for Design Thinking (at Stanford's Design School and beyond)
Problem Solving in Our Schools:
Improving education for problem solving, educators should want to design instruction that will help students improve their thinking skills. an effective strategy for doing this is..., goal-directed designing of curriculum & instruction.
When we are trying to solve a problem (to “make things better”) by improving our education for problem solving, a useful two-part process is to...
1. Define GOALS for desired outcomes, for the ideas-and-skills we want students to learn;
2. Design INSTRUCTION with Learning Activities that will provide opportunities for experience with these ideas & skills, and will help students learn more from their experiences.
Basically, the first part ( Define Goals ) is deciding WHAT to Teach , and the second part ( Design Instruction ) is deciding HOW to Teach .
But before looking at WHAT and HOW , here are some ways to combine them with...
Strategies for Goal-Directed Designing of WHAT-and-HOW.
Understanding by Design ( UbD ) is a team of experts in goal-directed designing,
as described in an overview of Understanding by Design from Vanderbilt U.
Wikipedia describes two key features of UbD: "In backward design, the teacher starts with classroom outcomes [#1 in Goal-Directed Designing above ] and then [#2] plans the curriculum, * choosing activities and materials that help determine student ability and foster student learning," and "The goal of Teaching for Understanding is to give students the tools to take what they know, and what they will eventually know, and make a mindful connection between the ideas. ... Transferability of skills is at the heart of the technique. Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggin's technique. If a student is able to transfer the skills they learn in the classroom to unfamiliar situations, whether academic or non-academic, they are said to truly understand."
* UbD "offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Its two key ideas are contained in the title: 1) focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer, and 2) design curriculum “backward” from those ends."
ASCD – the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (specializing in educational leadership ) – has a resources-page for Understanding by Design that includes links to The UbD Framework and Teaching for Meaning and Understanding: A Summary of Underlying Theory and Research plus sections for online articles and books — like Understanding by Design ( by Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe with free intro & U U ) and Upgrade Your Teaching: Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience ( about How the Brain Learns Best by Jay McTighe & Judy Willis who did a fascinating ASCD Webinar ) and other books — plus DVDs and videos (e.g. overview - summary ) & more .
Other techniques include Integrative Analysis of Instruction and Goal-Directed Aesop's Activities .
In two steps for a goal-directed designing of education , you:
1) Define GOALS (for WHAT you want students to improve) ;
2) Design INSTRUCTION (for HOW to achieve these Goals) .
Although the sections below are mainly about 1. WHAT to Teach (by defining Goals ) and 2. HOW to Teach (by designing Instruction ) there is lots of overlapping, so you will find some "how" in the WHAT, and lots of "what" in the HOW.
P ERSONAL Skills (for Thinking about Self)
A very useful personal skill is developing-and-using a...
Growth Mindset: If self-education is broadly defined as learning from your experiences, better self-education is learning more effectively by learning more from experience, and getting more experiences. One of the best ways to learn more effectively is by developing a better growth mindset so — when you ask yourself “how well am I doing in this area of life?” and honestly answer “not well enough” — you are thinking “not yet” (instead of “not ever”) because you are confident that in this area of life (as in most areas, including those that are most important) you can “grow” by improving your skills, when you invest intelligent effort in your self-education. And you can support the self-education of other people by helping them improve their own growth mindsets. Carol Dweck Revisits the Growth Mindset and (also by Dweck) a video, Increasing Educational Equity and Opportunity . 3 Ways Educators Can Promote A Growth Mindset by Dan LaSalle, for Teach for America. Growth Mindset: A Driving Philosophy, Not Just a Tool by David Hochheiser, for Edutopia. Growth Mindset, Educational Equity, and Inclusive Excellence by Kris Slowinski who links to 5 videos . What’s Missing from the Conversation: The Growth Mindset in Cultural Competency by Rosetta Lee. YouTube video search-pages for [ growth mindset ] & [ mindset in education ] & [ educational equity mindset ].
also: Growth Mindset for Creativity
Self-Perception -- [[a note to myself: accurate understanding/evaluation of self + confidence in ability to improve/grow ]]
M ETA C OGNITIVE Skills (for Solving Problems)
What is metacognition? Thinking is cognition. When you observe your thinking and think about your thinking (maybe asking “how can I think more effectively?”) this is meta- cognition, which is cognition about cognition. To learn more about metacognition — what it is, why it's valuable, and how to use it more effectively — some useful web-resources are:
a comprehensive introductory overview by Nancy Chick, for Vanderbilt U.
my links-section has descriptions of (and links to) pages by other authors: Jennifer Livingston, How People Learn, Marsha Lovett, Carleton College, Johan Lehrer, Rick Sheets, William Peirce, and Steven Shannon, plus links for Self-Efficacy with a Growth Mindset , and more about metacognition.
my summaries about the value of combining cognition-and-metacognition and regulating it for Thinking Strategies (of many kinds ) to improve Performing and/or Learning by Learning More from Experience with a process that is similar to...
the Strategies for Self-Regulated Learning developed by other educators.
videos — search youtube for [ metacognition ] and [ metacognitive strategies ] and [ metacognition in education ].
And in other parts of this links-page,
As one part of guiding students during an inquiry activity a teacher can stimulate their metacognition by helping them reflect on their experiences.
While solving problems, almost always it's useful to think with empathy and also with metacognitive self-empathy by asking “what do they want?” and “what do I want?” and aiming for a win-win solution.
P ROCESS -C OORDINATING Skills (for Solving Problems)
THINKING SKILLS and THINKING PROCESS: When educators develop strategies to improve the problem solving abilities of students, usually their focus is on thinking skills. But thinking process is also important.
Therefore, it's useful to define thinking skills broadly, to include thinking that leads to decisions-about-actions, and actions:
thinking → action-decisions → actions
[[ I.O.U. -- later, in mid-June 2021, the ideas below will be developed -- and i'll connect it with Metacognitive Skills because we use Metacognition to Coordinate Process.
[[ here are some ideas that eventually will be in this section:
Collaborative Problem Solving [[ this major new section will link to creative.htm# collaborative-creativity (with a brief summary of ideas from there) and expand these ideas to include general principles and "coordinating the collaboration" by deciding who will do what, when, with some individual "doing" and some together "doing" ]]
actions can be mental and/or physical (e.g. actualizing Experimental Design to do a Physical Experiment, or actualizing an Option-for-Action into actually doing the Action
[[a note to myself: educational goals: we should help students improve their ability to combine their thinking skills — their creative Generating of Options and critical Generating of Options, plus using their Knowledge-of-Ideas that includes content-area knowledge plus the Empathy that is emphasized in Design Thinking — into an effective thinking process .
[[ Strategies for Coordinating: students can do this by skillfully Coordinating their Problem-Solving Actions (by using their Conditional Knowledge ) into an effective Problem-Solving Process.
[[ During a process of design, you coordinate your thinking-and-actions by making action decisions about “what to do next.” How? When you are "skillfully Coordinating..." you combine cognitive/metacognitive awareness (of your current problem-solving process) with (by knowing, for each skill, what it lets you accomplish, and the conditions in which it will be useful).
[[ a little more about problem-solving process
[[ here are more ideas that might be used here:
Sometimes tenacious hard work is needed, and perseverance is rewarded. Or it may be wise to be flexible – to recognize that what you've been doing may not be the best approach, so it's time to try something new – and when you dig in a new location your flexibility pays off.
Perseverance and flexibility are contrasting virtues. When you aim for an optimal balancing of this complementary pair, self-awareness by “knowing yourself” is useful. Have you noticed a personal tendency to err on the side of either too much perseverance or not enough? Do you tend to be overly rigid, or too flexible?
Making a wise decision about perseverance — when you ask, “Do I want to continue in the same direction, or change course?” * — is more likely when you have an aware understanding of your situation, your actions, the results, and your goals. Comparing results with goals is a Quality Check, providing valuable feedback that you can use as a “compass” to help you move in a useful direction. When you look for signs of progress toward your goals in the direction you're moving, you may have a feeling, based on logic and experience, that your strategy for coordinating the process of problem solving isn't working well, and it probably never will. Or you may feel that the goal is almost in sight and you'll soon reach it.
- How I didn't Learn to Ski (and then did) with Persevering plus Flexible Insight -
PRINCIPLES for PROBLEM SOLVING
Should we explicitly teach principles for thinking, can we use a process of inquiry to teach principles for inquiry, should we use a “model” for problem-solving process.
combining models?
What are the benefits of infusion and separate programs?
Principles & Strategies & Models ?
Should we explicitly teach “principles” for thinking?
Using evidence and logic — based on what we know about the ways people think and learn — we should expect a well-designed combination of “experience + reflection + principles” to be more educationally effective than experience by itself, to help students improve their creative-and-critical thinking skills and whole-process skills in solving problems (for design-inquiry) and answering questions (for science-inquiry).
Can we use a process-of-inquiry to teach principles-for-inquiry?
* In a typical sequence of ERP, students first get Experiences by doing a design activity. During an activity and afterward, they can do Reflections (by thinking about their experiences) and this will help them recognize Principles for doing Design-Thinking Process that is Problem-Solving Process. { design thinking is problem-solving thinking }
During reflections & discussions, typically students are not discovering new thoughts & actions. Instead they are recognizing that during a process of design they are using skills they already know because they already have been using Design Thinking to do almost everything in their life . A teacher can facilitate these recognitions by guiding students with questions about what they are doing now, and what they have done in the past, and how these experiences are similar, but also are different in some ways. When students remember (their prior experience) and recognize (the process they did use, and are using), they can formulate principles for their process of design thinking. But when they formulate principles for their process of problem solving, they are just making their own experience-based prior knowledge — of how they have been solving problems, and are now solving problems — more explicit and organized.
If we help students "make their own experience-based prior knowledge... more explicit and organized" by showing them how their knowledge can be organized into a model for problem-solving process, will this help them improve their problem-solving abilities?
IOU - This mega-section will continue being developed in mid-June 2021.
[[a note to myself: thinking skills and thinking process — What is the difference? - Experience + Reflection + Principles - coordination-decisions
[[are the following links specifically for this section about "experience + principles"? maybe not because these seem to be about principles, not whether to teach principles.]]
An excellent overview is Teaching Thinking Skills by Kathleen Cotton. (the second half of her page is a comprehensive bibliography)
This article is part of The School Improvement Research Series (available from Education Northwest and ERIC ) where you can find many useful articles about thinking skills & other topics, by Cotton & other authors. [[a note to myself: it still is excellent, even though it's fairly old, written in 1991 -- soon, I will search to find more-recent overviews ]]
Another useful page — What Is a Thinking Curriculum ? (by Fennimore & Tinzmann) — begins with principles and then moves into applications in Language Arts, Mathematics, Sciences, and Social Sciences.
My links-page for Teaching-Strategies that promote Active Learning explores a variety of ideas about strategies for teaching (based on principles of constructivism, meaningful reception,...) in ways that are intended to stimulate active learning and improve thinking skills. Later, a continuing exploration of the web will reveal more web-pages with useful “thinking skills & problem solving” ideas (especially for K-12 students & teachers) and I'll share these with you, here and in TEACHING ACTIVITIES .
Of course, thinking skills are not just for scholars and schoolwork, as emphasized in an ERIC Digest , Higher Order Thinking Skills in Vocational Education . And you can get information about 23 ==Programs that Work from the U.S. Dept of Education.
goals can include improving affective factors & character == e.g. helping students learn how to develop & use use non-violent solutions for social problems .
INFUSION and/or SEPARATE PROGRAMS?
In education for problem solving, one unresolved question is "What are the benefits of infusion, or separate programs? " What is the difference?
With infusion , thinking skills are closely integrated with content instruction in a subject area, in a "regular" course.
In separate programs , independent from content-courses, the explicit focus of a course is to help students improve their thinking skills.
In her overview of the field, Kathleen Cotton says,
Of the demonstrably effective programs, about half are of the infused variety, and the other half are taught separately from the regular curriculum. ... The strong support that exists for both approaches... indicates that either approach can be effective. Freseman represents what is perhaps a means of reconciling these differences [between enthusiastic advocates of each approach] when he writes, at the conclusion of his 1990 study: “Thinking skills need to be taught directly before they are applied to the content areas. ... I consider the concept of teaching thinking skills directly to be of value especially when there follows an immediate application to the content area.”
For principles and examples of infusion , check the National Center for Teaching Thinking which lets you see == What is Infusion? (an introduction to the art of infusing thinking skills into content instruction), and == sample lessons (for different subjects, grade levels, and thinking skills). -- resources from teach-think-org -- [also, lessons designed to infuse Critical and Creative Thinking into content instruction]
Infusing Teaching Thinking Into Subject-Area Instruction (by Robert Swarz & David Perkins) - and more about the book
And we can help students improve their problem-solving skills with teaching strategies that provide structure for instruction and strategies for thinking . ==[use structure+strategies only in edu-section?
Adobe [in creative]
MORE about Teaching Principles for Problem Solving
[[ i.o.u. -- this section is an "overlap" between #1 (Goals) and #2 (Methods) so... maybe i'll put it in-between them? -- i'll decide soon, maybe during mid-June 2021 ]]
Two Kinds of Inquiry Activities (for Science and Design )
To more effectively help students improve their problem-solving skills, teachers can provide opportunities for students to be actively involved in solving problems, with inquiry activities . What happens during inquiry? Opportunities for inquiry occur whenever a gap in knowledge — in conceptual knowledge (so students don't understand) or procedural knowledge (so they don't know what to do, or how) — stimulates action (mental and/or physical) and students are allowed to think-do-learn.
Students can be challenged to solve two kinds of problems during two kinds of inquiry activity:
during Science-Inquiry they try to improve their understanding, by asking problem-questions and seeking answers. During their process of solving problems, they are using Science-Design , aka Science , to design a better explanatory theory.
during Design-Inquiry they try to improve some other aspect(s) of life, by defining problem-projects and seeking solutions. During their process of solving problems, they are using General Design (which includes Engineering and more) to design a better product, activity, or strategy.
But... whether the main objective is for Science-Design or General Design, a skilled designer will be flexible, will do whatever will help them solve the problem(s). Therefore a “scientist” sometimes does engineering, and an “engineer” sometimes does science. A teacher can help students recognize how-and-why they also do these “ crossover actions ” during an activity for Science Inquiry or Design Inquiry. Due to these connections, we can build transfer-bridges between the two kinds of inquiry , and combine both to develop “hybrid activities” for Science-and-Design Inquiry.
Goal-Priorities: There are two kinds of inquiry, so (re: Goals for What to Learn) what emphasis do we want to place on activities for Science -Inquiry and Design -Inquiry? (in the limited amount of classroom time that teachers can use for Inquiry Activities)
Two Kinds of Improving (for Performing and Learning )
Goal-Priorities: There are two kinds of improving, so (re: Goals for What to Learn) what emphasis do we want to place on better Performing (now) and Learning (for later)?
When defining goals for education, we ask “How important is improving the quality of performing now, and (by learning now ) of performing later ?” For example, a basketball team (coach & players) will have a different emphasis in an early-season practice (when their main goal is learning well) and end-of-season championship game (when their main goal is performing well). {we can try to optimize the “total value” of performing/learning/enjoying for short-term fun plus long-term satisfactions }
SCIENCE (to use-learn-teach Skills for Problem Solving )
Problem-solving skills used for science.
This section supplements models for Scientific Method that "begin with simplicity, before moving on to models that are more complex so they can describe the process more completely-and-accurately. " On the spectrum of simplicity → complexity , one of the simplest models is...
POE (Predict, Observe, Learn) to give students practice with the basic scientific logic we use to evaluate an explanatory theory about “what happens, how, and why.” POE is often used for classroom instruction — with interactive lectures [iou - their website is temporarily being "restored"] & in other ways — and research has shown it to be effective. A common goal of instruction-with-POE is to improve the conceptual knowledge of students, especially to promote conceptual change their alternative concepts to scientific concepts. But students also improve their procedural knowledge for what the process of science is, and how to do the process. { more – What's missing from POE ( experimental skills ) w hen students use it for evidence-based argumentation and Ecologies - Educational & Conceptual }
Dany Adams (at Smith College) explicitly teaches critical thinking skills – and thus experiment-using skills – in the context of scientific method.
Science Buddies has models for Scientific Method (and for Engineering Design Process ) and offers Detailed Help that is useful for “thinking skills” education. ==[DetH]
Next Generation Science Standards ( NGSS ) emphasizes the importance of designing curriculum & instruction for Three Dimensional Learning with productive interactions between problem-solving Practices (for Science & Engineering ) and Crosscutting Concepts and Disciplinary Core Ideas.
Science: A Process Approach ( SAPA ) was a curriculum program earlier, beginning in the 1960s. Michael Padilla explains how SAPA defined The Science Process Skills as "a set of broadly transferable abilities, appropriate to many science disciplines and reflective of the behavior of scientists. SAPA categorized process skills into two types, basic and integrated. The basic (simpler) process skills provide a foundation for learning the integrated (more complex) skills." Also, What the Research Says About Science Process Skills by Karen Ostlund; and Students' Understanding of the Procedures of Scientific Enquiry by Robin Millar, who examines several approaches and concludes (re: SAPA) that "The process approach is not, therefore, a sound basis for curriculum planning, nor does the analysis on which it is based provide a productive framework for research." But I think parts of it can be used creatively for effective instruction. { more about SAPA }
ENGINEERING (to use-learn-teach Skills for Problem Solving )
Problem-solving skills used for engineering.
Engineering is Elementary ( E i E ) develops activities for students in grades K-8. To get a feeling for the excitement they want to share with teachers & students, watch an "about EiE" video and explore their website . To develop its curriculum products, EiE uses research-based Design Principles and works closely with teachers to get field-testing feedback, in a rigorous process of educational design . During instruction, teachers use a simple 5-phase flexible model of engineering design process "to guide students through our engineering design challenges... using terms [ Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve ] children can understand." {plus other websites about EiE }
Project Lead the Way ( PLTW ), another major developer of k-12 curriculum & instruction for engineering and other areas, has a website you can explore to learn about their educational philosophy & programs (at many schools ) & resources and more. And you can web-search for other websites about PLTW.
Science Buddies , at level of k-12, has tips for science & engineering .
EPICS ( home - about ), at college level, is an engineering program using EPICS Design Process with a framework supplemented by sophisticated strategies from real-world engineering. EPICS began at Purdue University and is now used at ( 29 schools) (and more with IUCCE ) including Purdue, Princeton, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Arizona State, UC San Diego, Drexel, and Butler.
DESIGN THINKING (to use-learn-teach Skills for Problem Solving )
Design Thinking emphasizes the importance of using empathy to solve human-centered problems.
Stanford Institute of Design ( d.school ) is an innovative pioneer in teaching a process of human-centered design thinking that is creative-and-critical with empathy . In their Design Thinking Bootleg – that's an updated version of their Bootcamp Bootleg – they share a wide variety of attitudes & techniques — about brainstorming and much more — to stimulate productive design thinking with the objective of solving real-world problems. {their first pioneer was David Kelley }
The d.school wants to "help prepare a generation of students to rise with the challenges of our times." This goal is shared by many other educators, in k-12 and colleges, who are excited about design thinking. Although d.school operates at college level, they (d.school + IDEO ) are active in K-12 education as in their website about Design Thinking in Schools ( FAQ - resources ) that "is a directory [with brief descriptions] of schools and programs that use design thinking in the curriculum for K12 students... design thinking is a powerful way for today’s students to learn, and it’s being implemented by educators all around the world." { more about Education for Design Thinking in California & Atlanta & Pittsburgh & elsewhere} [[a note to myself: @ ws and maybe my broad-definition page]]
On twitter, # DTk12 chat is an online community of enthusiastic educators who are excited about Design Thinking ( DT ) for K-12 Education, so they host a weekly twitter chat (W 9-10 ET) and are twitter-active informally 24/7.
PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (to use-learn-teach Skills for Problem Solving )
Problem-Based Learning ( PBL ? ) is a way to improve motivation, thinking, and learning. You can learn more from:
overviews of PBL from U of WA & Learning-Theories.com ;
and (in ERIC Digests) using PBL for science & math plus a longer introduction - challenges for students & teachers (we never said it would be easy!) ;
a deeper examination by John Savery (in PDF & [without abstract] web-page );
Most Popular Papers from The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning ( about IJPBL ).
videos about PBL by Edutopia (9:26) and others ;
a search in ACSD for [problem-based learning] → a comprehensive links-page for Problem-Based Learning and an ACSD-book about...
Problems as Possibilities by Linda Torp and Sara Sage: Table of Contents - Introduction (for 2nd Edition) - samples from the first & last chapters - PBL Resources (including WeSites in Part IV) .
PBL in Schools:
Samford University uses PBL (and other activities) for Transformational Learning that "emphasizes the whole person, ... helps students grow physically, mentally, and spiritually, and encourages them to value public service as well as personal gain."
In high school education, Problem-Based Learning Design Institute from Illinois Math & Science Academy ( about ); they used to have an impressive PBL Network ( sitemap & web-resources from 2013, and 9-23-2013 story about Kent, WA ) that has mysteriously disappeared. https://www.imsa.edu/academics/inquiry/resources/ research_ethics
Vanderbilt U has Service Learning thru Community Engagement with Challenges and Opportunities and tips for Teaching Step by Step & Best Practices and Resource-Links for many programs, organizations, articles, and more.
What is PBL? The answer is " Problem-Based Learning and/or Project-Based Learning " because both meanings are commonly used. Here are 3 pages (+ Wikipedia) that compare PBL with PBL, examine similarities & differences, consider definitions:
John Larmer says "we [at Buck Institute for Education which uses Project Based Learning ] decided to call problem-based learning a subset of project-based learning [with these definitions, ProblemBL is a narrower category, so all ProblemBL is ProjectBL, but not vice versa] – that is, one of the ways a teacher could frame a project is to solve a problem, " and concludes that "the semantics aren't worth worrying about, at least not for very long. The two PBLs are really two sides of the same coin. ... The bottom line is the same: both PBLs can powerfully engage and effectively teach your students!" Chris Campbell concludes, "it is probably the importance of conducting active learning with students that is worthy and not the actual name of the task. Both problem-based and project-based learning have their place in today’s classroom and can promote 21st Century learning." Jan Schwartz says "there is admittedly a blurring of lines between these two approaches to education, but there are differences." Wikipedia has Problem-Based Learning (with "both" in P5BL ) and Project-Based Learning .
i.o.u. - If you're wondering "What can I do in my classroom today ?", eventually (maybe in June 2021) there will be a section for "thinking skills activities" in this page, and in the area for TEACHING ACTIVITIES .
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