What If?: Building Students' Problem-Solving Skills Through Complex Challenges

If a fundamental goal of schooling is to prepare young people for the unknowable future, why do we assign students so many clearly defined tasks with predetermined solutions?

According to educator and creativity expert Ronald A. Beghetto, the best way to unleash students' problem solving and creativity—and thus prepare them to face real-world problems—is to incorporate complex challenges that teach students to respond productively to uncertainty. In this thought-provoking book, Beghetto explains

• How to foster "possibility thinking" to help students open up their thinking in creative, sometimes counterintuitive ways.
• The process of lesson unplanning, a way of transforming existing lessons, activities, and assignments into more complex classroom challenges.
• Four basic action principles that teachers and students can use to design and solve complex challenges both inside and outside the classroom.
• The steps for creating legacy challenges, which require students to identify a problem, develop a solution, and ensure that their work makes a lasting contribution.

With planning forms and detailed sample activities, this practical guide will enable teachers at every grade level to design a full range of challenges in any subject area. Invite uncertainty into your classroom—and discover what your students are capable of.

Ronald A. Beghetto is an internationally recognized expert on creativity in educational settings. He is professor of educational psychology in the Neag School of Education and director of the Innovation House at the University of Connecticut. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Creative Behavior and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Dr. Beghetto has published seven books and more than 100 articles and scholarly book chapters on creative and innovative approaches to teaching, learning, and leadership in schools and classrooms. He speaks and provides workshops around the world on issues related to helping teachers and instructional leaders develop new and transformative possibilities for classroom teaching, learning, and leadership in K–12 and higher education settings.