Teacher-research clubs are an effective and infectious way to solve problems and fuel passion. Educators Sally Donnelly and Megan McCormick discuss how their do-it-yourself teacher research club helped their colleagues gain perspective on problems of practice and grew to be an influential part of their school district.

School leaders' resilience is best built as a collective effort, write Soraya Sablo Sutton and Nate Gong. The "Change Makers" program at UC Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute gave school leaders across California the opportunity to work together to solve problems of practice and build their collective resilience--a key to…

Educators need collaborative opportunities to renew their love of learning, not just to review data and rework lessons. Researcher Ian Parker Renga and coauthors examine the power of Math Teachers' Circles--a group of educators that get together to play math games and solve problems just for the joy of it.

Infusing five processes into assignments can help students hone the skills they'll need to address complex problems. The world students will enter is full of complex, unpredictable problems--and students will need sophisticated thinking skills to cope. The authors unpack five thinking processes students need to internalize through opportunities in…

As consultants who infuse the "Habits of Mind" into schools, the authors explain how spreading these habits through school can increase the whole school's well-being and feed teacher efficacy. They list seven factors that can create a "culture of efficacy" that draws on these 16 habits (thinking dispositions at the core of…

Students need specific thinking--or Habits of Mind--to engage with problems and become self-directed learners, write Arthur L. Costa, Bena Kallick, Jay McTighe, and Allison Zmuda. A curricular approach based on enhancing students' understanding of conceptually significant, transferable ideas can help schools teach these dispositions.

Self-directed student learning begins with self-directed educators. Teachers in Greenville, North Carolina, are training in the Habits of Mind, a series of thinking behaviors that support self-directed learning by helping students successfully tackle complex problems. The authors outline key instructional strategies that have grown from these…

Besides "thinking outside the box," the creativity needed to solve problems often involves thinking differently about the box, finding a new approach or off-beat way to use the materials, conditions, and even constraints that one has. Spencer discusses creative constraint--what happens when a problem solver runs into barriers that make…

Using the Teach to Lead process and drawing on their own study of how teachers can lift their social-emotional skills, three elementary teachers in Connecticut created a plan to work with fellow teachers to increase everyone's camaraderie and regularly problem solve together. When their school closed to in-place learning, they pivoted to find ways…

To prepare students for a tech-intensive future, educators cannot hold on to 20th-century learning practices. They must reimagine education and cultivate an updated skill set. Lessons led by caring educators will continue to help students be strong learners and critical thinkers; but "human" skills will equip them to handle an uncertain…

Three mathematics education researchers discuss their findings on the use of diagrams in math instruction for English language learners. The authors show how diagrams can help students who are English learners better develop mathematical thinking and communicate their mathematical understanding.

At the root of problem solving, Tishman and Clapp assert, is a sense of agency. The impetus to engage with a problem starts with a sense that it's possible to reshape something by directing one's actions purposefully. The authors--who participated in a long-term project observing how the "maker movement" is being implemented in…

By allowing students to ask critical questions about the places and spaces surrounding them, teachers can empower them to develop problem-solving skills to tackle issues and make a difference in their communities. In this article, Smith and Lowenstein offer three wonderful examples of long-standing environmental place-based education projects that…

Most teachers try to avoid having students experience uncertainty in their schoolwork. But if we want to prepare students to tackle complex problems (and the uncertainty that accompanies such problems), we must give them learning experiences that involve feeling unsure and sometimes even confused. Beghetto presents five strategies that help…

The author describes how Virginia Beach City Public Schools developed a performance assessment that they administer to all 4th graders, 7th graders, and high school students in the district. He describes lessons learned about creating good performance tasks and developing a successful scoring process, as well as sharing tools connected to this…