Dr. Paul Hanstedt, Director of the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University and author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses For a Complex World talks about the need to create wicked students ready to solve the future’s most wicked problems.
We need to encourage our students to become wicked thinkers in order to tackle the world’s most wicked problems. This means embracing lateral thinking, persistence, and creative, long-term problem solving.
Wicked problems are defined as more than just 'difficult': they are almost never solved after just one attempt.
To solve a wicked problem requires creativity, innovation, new ways of thinking, and, often, teamwork over a long period of time.
Are our students wicked enough?
Defining Wicked Problems
According to Dr. Hanstedt, “A wicked problem is a problem where the parameters of the challenge are in flux.” For example: the ever-changing challenges of daily life during COVID-19.
At its core, a wicked problem may not even be solvable, but getting closer to an answer that mitigates the challenge is a goal for the greater solution.
Solving a wicked problem takes both the courage to make the attempt despite probable defeat and the humility to identify what went wrong and try again.
Wicked problems may change over time, impacted by factors like:
- Politics
- Religion
- Sociology
- Economics
- Race
- Geography
- Interdisciplinary knowledge
“Oftentimes there are conflicting answers and ways of interpreting what's going on with a wicked problem," Dr. Hanstedt observes, "which just adds to that volatility, that difficulty of solving it.”
It’s clear that we urgently need to instill the competencies of a wicked problem solver in our students — but how?
Wicked Problem Solvers
To become wicked problem solvers, students must be persistent. Persistence means not only accepting failure, but also growing from experience over time.
When students face a situation that they’ve never seen before, one that perhaps cannot be solved completely or perfectly, they'll need to explore how to translate and apply ideas from different fields. They need to keep trying to make progress toward a solution.
Dr. Hanstedt describes this quality as “an experimental spirit.”
Wicked Problems in the Classroom
A wicked classroom, designed specifically with the goal of training problem solvers, treats content as a tool to solve problems.
For example, the discipline of chemistry is a way to solve problems about elements. Similarly, the field of philosophy is a way to solve problems about ideas, and history is a set of techniques and methodologies to understand, reconcile, or solve the complexities of the past.
A course designed around wicked problems asks this question:
What are you going to do with the content?
Room for Stumbling
Wicked classrooms give students the space they need to stumble and fall.
If we want students to build resilience and persistence, we need to design a classroom in which stumbling is encouraged and rewarded, rather than treated as detrimental.
Room for Riddling
One of the best techniques to encourage long-term lateral thinking that Dr. Hanstedt mentions is to play with riddles. For example, posing a riddle like this one:
A person walks into a bar and asks for a glass of water. The bartender looks at the person, pulls out a gun, and points it at them. The person thanks the bartender and leaves. What’s going on? You can only ask yes or no questions to find out.
This type of problem allows students to grow comfortable with challenges that can’t be solved immediately. By learning how to linger in uncertainty, students overcome their fear of complexity.
Starting Monday with a riddle for the week, or closing a novel at a suspenseful moment and asking students to forecast upcoming events are fun, easy ways to accustom students to accepting a lack of an immediate answer.
P.S. Find the answer to the riddle at the end of this blog.
Action Steps for Parents
1 - Ask Questions Without Answers
Encourage exploration and curiosity by asking open-ended questions without providing an answer. Instead, ask your children for their ideas and discuss possibilities with them.
When your children ask, “Why is such and such?”, you can send the question back by asking, “Huh, what do you think?”
2 - Play with Riddles
Use lateral thinking games, brain teasers, minute mysteries, or detective riddles for family fun, as well as to model how to approach situations that may not make sense right away.
3 - Face Discomfort Willingly
Evaluate your willingness to face situations that make you uncomfortable.
“This is really a key component with a wicked problem,” Dr. Hanstedt says. “We need to be comfortable with discomfort and recognize that discomfort is oftentimes the thing that creates a catalyzing creative space that keeps us moving forward.”
Support this skill in your children through extracurriculars like theater, music, and other cooperative group activities, whether they participate in schools or independently. As Dr. Hanstedt points out, notable ideas are often collaborative.
Guest Resources
- Dr. Paul Hanstedt's website
- Washington and Lee University
- Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses For a Complex World by Paul Hanstedt
- Two-Minute Mysteries by Donald J. Sobol
- Raising Problem Solvers Guidebook by Art of Problem Solving
The Answer to the Riddle?
The person has hiccups.
--
This episode was brought to you by Art of Problem Solving, where students train to become the great problem solvers of tomorrow.
To get weekly episode summaries right to your inbox, follow the podcast at the bottom of this page or anywhere you get podcasts. Ideas for the show? Reach us at podcast@aops.com.
