6 Steps of the Problem-Solving Process in Social Studies

Kirsten 0:00

Hello there, and welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Tuning in today, we are going to be talking about the problem solving process that you can utilize in social studies, and really any subject that requires some type of problem that needs to be solved, can be a real world scenario, or it could be something that's completely made up. This was recently featured in the social studies boot camp for upper elementary teachers. We had so many educators, hundreds of educators register for this boot camp in the last couple of months, and I wanted on each live to kind of share a little bit more in depth with what was in the main training video. And so for the third day of the boot camp, we talked about project based learning in social studies and tips to implement it. But in the live I went into a little subset of project based learning called problem based learning. So I'm going to share with you that section right here on the podcast. It's going to be talking about the six main steps to the problem solving process. And if you happen to be living in Texas, it does align with the TEKS. There's a section of the social studies skills where it talks about problem solving and decision making skills, and so you're going to see that it lines up perfectly. So let's go ahead and dive in.

Kirsten 2:20

All right. So today we are going to talk about another subset of PBL. This one is problem based learning. So PBL, Problem Based Learning is a student centered approach to learning, where students learn about a subject by working in groups to solve an open ended problem, instead of directly teaching facts and concepts. PBL uses real world problems as a starting point for exploration. So I think there were a couple of comments that had this kind of idea, like kind of tiering towards that real world scenario, real world problem. So I'm going to be walking you through the six different steps that you could take with the problem solving process, and I have an interesting prompt - a developer applies to install a small wastewater treatment plant right near your neighborhood, use the problem solving process to create a solution, and this, unfortunately, may or may not have been based on true events happening right near our neighborhood, near our elementary school. But luckily, there's a good ending I'll be sharing with that through the steps.

Kirsten 3:31

So the first step we've got identifying the main problem. What is the main problem that is faced? So obviously this would be, there is a small wastewater treatment plant, and it's going to be installed near a major neighborhood, near elementary schools and a lot of just varying businesses and properties.

Kirsten 3:56

The second step to gather information. What information do you know about wastewater treatment plants? So if you do some research, or you have students do research, they'll probably learn that it is very not healthy for communities at all. While it is, you know, they're cleaning out the wastewater, they're treating it. It flows out like they were explaining in the application how the effluent will be going through the neighborhood. Essentially, there's a lot of negative effects of it, especially if it's near a lot of neighborhoods, the smell can get to you, and developers may or may not be keeping up with it, or, you know, dealing with the treatment plant appropriately,

Kirsten 4:44

Considering options. What are the range of options to address the problem you can, you know, have students think about, well, what could we do? Maybe we could contact a local news source and tell them about the situation so they can spread the word, speaking of spread the word, maybe handing out flyers or putting up signs, letting the elementary school principal know about the situation, getting in contact with the city officials near the area. This is all stuff we did, and we also talked to our state representative. So these are all options that we could do to try to see what the problem could be. Another option thinking about like, what are other potential solutions? Like, do we have to build it? Could we tie into a city sewer line? Is there any way the developer could change their mind?

Kirsten 5:39

Next up is considering pros and cons. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution? So you could have students thinking about, okay, the advantages, I guess the developers will have to pay as much money as they would have to tie into the sewer lines. But the disadvantage is that the neighborhood is the property values might go down. There might be people who get sick from the effluent or the smell in the air. It may not be safe to play outside, or just, you know, live in, breathe in the general area.

Kirsten 6:18

Next up choosing a solution, thinking about what is the best solution to the problem. So you can have students either vote on this, or maybe have some type of discussion, or, like mock city council meeting, or some type of the sort, what would be the best solution you could you know, have a choice, a choice B probably guessing the best solution is to have, you know, the ability to tie into the nearest city waste line, so that the wastewater treatment plant doesn't have to be built at all.

Kirsten 6:54

And then lastly, the last idea, or last part of the problem solving process, evaluate effectiveness. How could we evaluate and adjust based on solutions and future problems? So you may or may not know this is actually something that happened to us, and the good news is that we did have a city council meeting, and the city council voted on tying into the nearest city wastewater line, so there is no plant being built. So we avoided that situation with a lot of effort, and it took over a year. But because we live in a semi rural area, and there's other land out there, we can think about, you know, other developers might want to also build a wastewater treatment plant somewhere else in the area or in the general vicinity. And how, you know, thinking about we can adjust that. You know that might be a future problem. You know we want to try to see if we can continue to speak to our representatives, elect the appropriate people who are against this type of activity, and also just keeping informed with what our cities are doing and what what the next steps would be.

Kirsten 8:13

So that is a general idea of, you know, the problem solving process. This is, this can be easily done with any type of real world problem, something happening in your local community or State community, or some current event that's happening. You can always tie these six steps in. Hopefully you enjoyed that breakdown of this problem solving process that I shared at the Facebook live during the boot camp. And if you happen to be a Smart and Simple Social Studies member, you'll be able to see the video version of this live and all the other videos from the boot camp in the workshop and training hub. All right, that's it for another episode. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and I'll talk to you again soon.