Concerns About Implementing Solution Seeking
Concern: What if students come up with an unworkable solution?
In the Solution Seeking Process, specific outcomes are not important. It doesn’t really matter which solution is selected. What is crucial is that children learn the importance of the process and how each step makes it work. The skill of learning to make decisions is more important than the decision itself.
If students’ solutions don’t work, return to the process and go through it again. Believe that students will learn as much from an unsuccessful selection as they will from a successful one.
For example, they may learn:
- Mistakes are not a catastrophe.
- Seeking solutions is a process and a way of life.
- Problems aren’t always solved on the first try.
- Few solutions are permanent; life is a process of adjustment, readjustment, and fine tuning.
Concern: How can I justify taking the time to use this process when I am expected to teach basic skills?
The rationale for investing time, effort, and energy to involve students in the Solution Seeking Process is varied and extensive.
Involving students in the Solution Seeking Process will save you time in the long run. When students help define problems, search for solutions, and reach consensus, they are more likely to follow their solutions. When students are committed to implementing solutions, you spend less time enforcing them. Time saved on enforcing solutions can be spent teaching, and time spent teaching can be spent on the basics.
Actually, the Solution Seeking Process is basic. The more you teach students to be solution-oriented and confident in solving personal problems, the better you have prepared them for a life of challenge, risk, and self-responsibility. When students learn the process of problem solving, they have learned a process they can use again and again to enhance the quality of their living and learning. What could be more basic?
More Key Information