The world of education has always adapted to best meet the needs of students. This has been especially true over the past two years as educators are required to adapt at a dizzying rate to meet the unique challenges presented by the global pandemic. These unique ever changing problems can often be classified as wicked. Wicked problems are extraordinarily difficult to troubleshoot because the facts and parameters surrounding our understanding of the problem change and are often incomplete. Because of this, a definitive solution to the problem does not exist (Rittel and Weber, 1973).
My Wicked Problem
“The emerging science of learning underscores the importance of rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and how learning is assessed.” (Bransford et al., 2000, p.14). My belief is that this is true of all learning and should be considered even when creating learning opportunities for educators. Because of this I spent the past five weeks analyzing and researching a wicked problem surrounding the process of educating educators. I documented my findings in a multimodal presentation titled A Wicked Problem Analysis Project.
How do we ensure educators are receiving the professional development needed to deliver high quality education?
Navigating My Wicked Problem
Along the way, I worked to define the problem researching and studying the parameters surrounding it before creating a survey attempting to determine how best to provide professional development opportunities so that educators can access them. The wickedness of this problem quickly emerged as I ran into contrasting views of what 21st Century Learning looks like (Read About It Here) and roadblocks in distributing my survey to collect data surrounding educator need.
I didn't let these set backs stop me. Utilizing the power of social media to distribute my survey I reached 17 educators and although my sample size is small, my data is mighty. Two key finding emerged from the data, 64.3% of respondents indicated that bite size professional development opportunities are effective, while 11 out of 14 respondents are willing to try Bitesize PD. These findings armed me with the knowledge needed to find a solution to my wicked problem. A wicked one that meets the needs of many and will require creative thinking to apply.
My Wicked Solution:
My solution is to come up with creative and diverse ways to offer professional development to area educators. I will continue to provide the face to face learning opportunities, but add nonconventional bite size professional development where learners can get focussed micro lessons to complete (Like This One). We will follow up with virtual and face to face meetings to reflect and discuss our learning. This solution will meet the needs of many while leaving room to adapt if future surveys determine a different solution is nessessary, as is often the case with wicked problems like this one.
References:
Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Rittel, H. & Weber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155-169.
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