Welcome
New? Find everything you need to know to get started learning our proven 6-step problem-solving approach and get to work preparing for the Future Problem Solving competition season. Highly flexible, the model may also be taught for use in the classroom and beyond.
Getting started
- Get familiar with our 6-step problem-solving model
- Learn how each step works
- Review the top tools for learning each step
- Explore our curricular resources
Our 6-step problem-solving model
- Infographic: Future Problem Solving 6-step approach
- Free Tool: Spider example – What do the 6 Steps look like?
- What is futures thinking?
Step 0. Research and analyze situation
Students first prepare for problem solving by researching and analyzing a real world issue. Students develop background knowledge, read current events, and study domain-specific vocabulary through their research.
- How to research before Step 1 checklist
- Free tool: Find the problems chart (KWL)
- Free tool: Preparing to write about the future
Step 1. Identify challenges
Students start by analyzing a given situation and generating possible challenges, issues, or problems related to the situation. A richer understanding of the situation develops as students identify logical cause and effect relationships. The first step encourages critical, creative, and futuristic thinking through the identification of many challenges in multiple categories.
- Free Tool: Categories list for generating and focusing ideas
- Free Tool: Identifying and writing challenges
Step 2. Select an underlying problem
After analyzing all the possible challenges identified, students narrow their focus to a single issue area of major importance. They complete this step by articulating the underlying problem they plan to solve.
- Underlying problem Step 2 checklist
- Free Tool: Writing the underlying problem
- Free Tool: Identifying the underlying problem (4I’s)
Step 3. Produce solution ideas
With their underlying problem selected, students shift to generating solutions to address this one problem. Quality, quantity, and the use of a variety of categories are encouraged in this step.
Step 4. Select criteria
At this point, students move to planning for action. They develop five criteria relevant to their underlying problem, each focused on a single standard, to measure the merit of their solution ideas.
Step 5. Apply criteria to top solutions
Students complete an evaluation grid by comparing their most promising solutions to their selected criteria. By ranking the solutions against each criterion separately, they determine their best solution.
Step 6. Develop an action plan
The problem-solving process does not end with a simple solution. Instead, in the final step, students develop a written plan of action to both explain their process and implement the best solution to address their underlying problem in the future.
Curricular resources
Discover all the ways to learn our 6-step problem-solving method. We offer a wide range of problem-solving tools and valuable resources for your students as they gather knowledge about Future Problem Solving topics of study or pursue other learning activities. Meaningfully engage students with critical and creative thinking skills using our interdisciplinary curricular resources.
