A framework for teaching problem-solving skills in environmental studies at the junior level.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate a method of instruction that promotes problem solving skills. Critics of current educational practices say that present methods of instruction are not preparing students for the requirements of the work force. While skilled in textbook procedures, student graduates lack the expertise to solve the ill-defined problems they experience and will continue to experience in a changing economic world. Experts today say that the competitive world centres around problem solving, requiring innovative thinking and technological expertise. Skills needed to solve problems are taught in schools but in isolated "chunks" rather than being co-ordinated or integrated in an explicit problem solving approach. The implicit assumption is that students will use these skills in a problem solving context when needed. The question to be answered is, whether students would be more effective problem solvers if they were taught problem solving skills explicitly and systematically in a teaching environment which focusses on problem solving, rather than in a teaching environment which focusses on content. In a content oriented environment, the assumption is made that students will learn problem solving skills implicitly and use these skills when needed. An adaptation of the framework of Induction proposed by cognitive scientists Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett and Thagard in their text Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning and Discovery (1986), was chosen as a theoretical base for the research. The model was chosen as it identifies three main components of problem solving: collecting information, analysing information and forming conclusions. These components were combined with the three types of knowledge also cited by cognitive scientists; declarative knowledge, knowing what; procedural knowledge, knowing how and conditional knowledge, knowing when and where. The three types of knowledge were used to structure the questions for the data collection which consisted of four interviews over a six month period, daily learning logs and four observations in each classroom. Sixty-four junior grade students from grades 4, 5 and 6 participated in the study. Each grade was taught the same two lesson segments, the first segment was developed for a content oriented environment and the second for a problem solving oriented environment. The objective was to identify student problem solving skills generated by the two teaching environments: one based on the Holland et al. (1986) framework of Induction in which skills, collecting information, analysing information and forming conclusions are integrated and coordinated in an explicit problem solving approach; the other, in which the same skills are developed in isolation with a focus on content. Results showed a shift in knowledge patterns from the content environment to the problem solving environment. After being taught in the problem solving environment, student explanations to declarative and procedural knowledge questions were better structured. In addition, there was a significant increase in their application or conditional knowledge to real life situations. Also, after a four month period, there was little decline in student recall of knowledge from the problem solving environment. In fact, retention increased for some students. The results show that the Holland et al. (1986) framework of Induction can be adapted to produce a simplified, systematic approach for curriculum design. The framework demonstrates that it can integrate the diversity and fragmentation of skills being recommended in curriculum guidelines and resource books