Wicked Problems

In recent weeks, I have been reading a fascinating collection of articles that were published in the 1970's (and of course some more modern articles); the topic is wicked problems. (Being a New Englander, I immediately connected with idea, although I was severely disappointed when I discovered the authors of the original idea were from California!)

Wicked problems are those in social sciences (including education) in which the science and engineering approaches used by natural scientists use are not useful. Wicked problems share many characteristics, many of which relate to the observation that these are social problems and one's assessment of the solution is affected by one's social context. In education, we know that "how good a teacher you are" depends on one's perspective; and your students, the school board, and the writers of standardized tests may all have different answers and different evidence to support their answers. Other characteristics of wicked problems relate to the many many factors that influence our understanding of the problem, the solutions we create, and our judgements of the solutions.

Education Week asked 11 education leaders to define 21st century learning. There are common themes in their answers, but in reading between the line of the answers, we see that we still have a long way to go if we expect to come to consensus on what schooling should look like in the 21st century.  Increasingly, I am coming to the conclusion that we will never come to consensus, and if we avoid looking purposefully at our work and doing the best we can to invent new practices in our schools and classrooms until that consensus in achieved, then we will forever be stuck in 19th century schools.