STEM, the integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects is a popular topic as schools grapple with how to best prepare students for an ever-evolving society. As societal and technological challenges emerge, design thinking has been lauded as a method to enable people to help tackle those challenges. The steps of the…

Business leaders, United States citizens, and American politicians continue to seek school reform as a means for providing the United States with a workforce consisting of employees who possess 21st century skills. The development of teacher transformational leadership and the use of distributed leadership practices are needed to create public…

In this article, the author discusses seven characteristics of classrooms that encourage maximum student participation in the education process: (1) democracy; (2) scientific method; (3) creativity; (4) change; (5) individualization; (6) socialization; and (7) problem solving. Using these concepts to make students part of the instructional…

A frequent criticism of education in the United States today is that teachers are not challenging and teaching students to think beyond the simple task of recalling information. In response to this criticism, during the school year of 1986-1987, the Delaware Department of Public Instruction and local school districts provided a staff development…

This booklet is one of six texts from a workplace literacy curriculum designed to assist learners in facing the increased demands of the workplace. Six problem-solving techniques are developed in the booklet to assist individuals and groups in making better decisions: problem identification, data gathering, data analysis, solution analysis,…

This booklet describes a process for creative classroom problem solving that can be adapted to many types of problems. The booklet's five sections correspond to five phases of the problem solving process. Each section begins with a description of the phase and then provides suggestions for using that phase in the classroom. The sections conclude…

Instruction should emphasize generic skills as much as it does occupational or domain-specific skills. Generic skills enable people to: (1) cooperate and communicate for group problem solving; (2) identify and define problems in complex environments; (3) seek, acquire, and synthesize new information; and (4) adapt to changes in the problem-solving…