Intentional Problem-Solving to Support Student Development

Overview

The ability to solve problems effectively is a fundamental skill, allowing students to effectively navigate barriers along their path to reaching their full and unique potential. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), responsible decision-making is a key social-emotional learning (SEL) competency and involves making caring and constructive choices across diverse situations.

To support the development of this competency, educators can introduce a problem-solving protocol in the classroom to address ongoing challenges by partnering with students to find solutions using the following steps:

Step 1: Provide rationale. 

Introduce problem-solving as a learnable skill with significance in students’ lives. Outline both short-term benefits (support in facing challenges) and long-term advantages (enhanced independence in problem-solving), and share ways in which problem-solving has personally supported you or past students in your course. Students can also brainstorm and share examples of their own experience solving and overcoming challenges, demonstrating their existing strengths and skills.

Step 2: Identify a problem. 

Choose a relevant challenge to solve. This could include:

• Existing Challenges: Ideally, these are student-generated and ongoing, such as: navigating school/homework and employment/extracurriculars, falling asleep in class, poor attendance, not turning in homework, or even having conflicts with peers. By choosing current concerns, teachers can automatically add relevance and urgency to this problem-solving process.

• Hypothetical Challenges: Often, it can be easier – and provide a greater sense of psychological safety to students who may encounter difficulties opening up – to discuss frequent and common challenges that many students will likely face, rather than diving into real-time problems. Teachers can also add course-specific concerns to preview for students (e.g., plagiarism, failing a test, poor study habits, challenging group work dynamics, conflict with a teacher). While perhaps not yet relevant, these challenges can help to normalize common issues and provide students the chance to practice problem-solving in a lower-stakes setting.

Step 3: Lead a guided reflection. 

Offer reflection questions for students to delve into the problem-solving process. Some examples of reflection questions include:

• Assess the Problem: “What is the specific problem you are trying to solve? Why is this a problem? What do you know about the possible causes or challenges creating this problem? Who do you know that might have experience or advice around this problem? What would it look like to solve this problem?”

• Identify a Response: “What are all the possible responses – such as choices or actions – you could pursue? What is the most likely outcome of each of these responses? Which response is most likely to get you to your desired outcome? Why?”

• Execute Your Response: “What response will you try first? What are the specific steps you will take to respond, and in what order? What is your timeline for taking these steps?”

• Reflect on the Outcome: “What happened? Was this the result you wanted? If your problem isn’t solved, what will you try next? If you could go back and make a different choice, would you? Why or why not?”

Reflection questions could be in the form of a checklist, guided questioning, or even a worksheet. Students could complete independently, as a class, or in groups – and responses can be written or provided verbally. Regardless of your format, ensure it is age-appropriate. Younger students will benefit from sentence-starters, pictures or visual representations of problems and solutions steps, and additional guided questioning to scaffold reflections. Older students will benefit from greater autonomy and independence while addressing more complex concerns in partnership with their peers and teachers.

Step 4: Repeat regularly. 

Normalize problem-solving as part of class routines, creating a responsive classroom culture and fostering a mindset that challenges are inevitable and – almost always – solvable. Encourage student input and ideas to address challenging aspects of the class (e.g., survey or feedback requests on the protocol or a form where students can recommend a problem for the class to address).

By holding time to intentionally problem-solve with students, teachers can tackle existing challenges directly while simultaneously nurturing critical thinking and fostering creativity, resilience, and adaptability within their students.