Teaching with Problem Solving

This is a post for educators who are interested in using problem-solving sociology in their classes, and either have not done so before and are interested in it, or who are looking to develop their methods. I hope you find something useful here!
This post is based on a short talk I am giving as part of a panel organized by the problem-solving sociology community. 
As of the day this is written, this problem solving's website is:​https://www.problemsolvingsociology.com/

I have a few linked files that go with this post, you can see them at this link, and I also provide links throughout to the various individual documents.

introduction

First, as a settler, I recognize and thank the Indigenous peoples of this continent for their ongoing work as stewards of the land and for creating critical spaces of engagement. I'm writing this in Albuquerque in New Mexico, and I recognize that New Mexico is, and always has been, an Indigenous place. Albuquerque is on the homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia.

I have taught with the problem solving approach at two universities and at the 400 and 300 level. I started with a class called "Sociology of the Environment and Social Justice" at the University of Toronto and I have taught Environmental Justice and Environmental Sociology at the University of New Mexico.

Immediately above, you can see some of the deliverables that my students have produced in classes where we work with the problem-solving framework. Here you can see a video we produced based on primary data, and policy briefs we produced on library materials. In this post, I’ll describe how I moved from making videos in groups, such as in that video you can see on screen, to creating policy briefs. I’ll talk about the stages I have gone through as I have taught with problem solving, and I hope my cautionary tales will help as you think about incorporating problem solving into your own classes, or developing how you already do it.

problem-solving sociology

I’ll first provide a short introduction of problem-solving sociology and show you a diagram for it that I use in my classes. As you may know, Monica Prasad published the book Problem-Solving Sociology in 2021. In the book, she proposes that sociologists may focus on problem-solving by asking what causes social problems and also what causes solutions to those problems. The box you can see on screen is from the book. Prasad says sociologists might focus on these questions listed in the box, primarily the latter three. In these questions, we analyze what causes a given problem, what works to solve it, and what causes the solutions to come about.

In my classes, we use this diagram that I created based on Prasad's book and also on my own thinking about this. My own additions here are that I like to think about what the ideal society would be, and to categorize the third and fourth questions as "transition" questions that try to move us from the problematic society we face closer to the ideal society.

​You can see there are two levels here, where the more narrow level asks about a particular problem, but we also keep a broader perspective that the problematic society will have many interdependent elements, and so any individual problem isn't really an isolated issue. In the diagram, this is reflected by having "Problematic Society" leading to "The Ideal Society", in contrast to most of the unbolded questions which are about an individual problem that we are focusing on:

I teach students how to think using this framework by getting them to use it as essentially a focused coding scheme for their readings, which they enter into a spreadsheet. See this link for my instructions to students for how to use the spreadsheet, and the pass/fail grading scheme for it. In the early weeks we talk a lot about Excel skills as well. So for each reading in the course schedule, they use the framework to describe what the reading says is the scope of the problem, what causes the problem, what the ideal society would be like, and how we transition to the ideal society. Students are free to choose what to put where in the spreadsheet, I don’t require any particular interpretation, and this is pass/fail assignment. 

Above is a screenshot of part of the spreadsheet, which you can also see at this link. Some students say learning Excel skills really helps them in their work/life. Others say they'll drop it immediately once the class is finished – can't please everyone!

problem-solving research with students

When I first taught using a problem-solving approach, I had a 400-level undergraduate seminar, with 15 students. I taught the class twice. I thought it would be great if we could produce reports and videos about primary research.

I began the process of involving students in primary research, when in Canada, by reaching out to organizations that jointly worked on environmental and social justice issues. I asked them what research question or questions they would like answered, that would help move their own initiatives for sustainability and social justice forward. In my seminar at the University of Toronto, we worked with four Canadian organizations over two rounds of the class: Seniors for Climate Action Now, the Council of Canadians, Grandmother’s Voice, and the High Park Nature Centre. As part of starting the research, I proceeded to get ethics approval for the class.

There were three projects, one looking to answer what is most effective for engaging older adults in climate action. Another investigating how community organizations in Canada had implemented reconciliation and decolonization initiatives. And finally a project on what moves people in nature programs from perceiving nature as a recreational backdrop to perceiving it as a set of ecological relationships.

During these 400-level seminars in Canada, we first checked whether the literature could answer the partner’s questions. Then, we conducted primary qualitative research to fill literature gaps.

One key aspect of these seminars was group work. The first time I had two groups of about 7, and the second time I had three groups of 5. Managing groups who are just learning how to do primary research is a major task in itself, and this format of the class was a great deal of work on my side.

The deliverable was also part of the excessive work. In the first round, we produced two very long reports, and in the second class, we produced videos, but only one of the videos was really shareable. I found that in general, it wasn’t feasible to run the class with primary research leading to long reports and videos. It required too great a time commitment on my side. It was rewarding to some degree, but I wanted to make some adjustments.

policy brief direction

Starting in 2025, in my 300-level classes, the deliverable has been individual policy briefs created by each student. We also have a new project, as I’m now in the US, in New Mexico, working with the Diné organization Indigenous Lifeways. The current project is to better understand how to improve oil and gas regulation in New Mexico.
 
So in my recent classes, I have removed group work, and instead I think of each student’s project as a small piece of a broader puzzle. And for now I have paused the primary research, partly because I have changed institutions and need to go through ethics approval again.

What I really appreciate about the policy briefs is that when the class ends, we have a finalized deliverable. At this link, you can see some of these deliverables (policy briefs). And at this link, you can see the assignment instructions, if you want to see how we get there. ​

The way we do it is the policy brief is the main assignment. It is scaffolded. I’m currently on a 16-week semester, and the first assignment is due about week 5. I call it the Statement of Intent. Essentially, here they need to describe what they are going to do in the policy brief.

I discuss with the community partner what they would like to see in a policy brief, in terms of meeting their goals. I have, so far let students have some discretion given the broad goals of the partner, but students actually didn’t like that – they wanted more direction. Going forward I’m going to assign students topics that more precisely help with the partner’s needs.

Then the mid-term project, anywhere from week 8 to week 10, is a 4-page policy brief, with 1 or more pages of references. My feedback for the mid-term policy brief is extensive. I go through and a describe everything they need to do for the brief to be professional and ready to be given to a policymaker. Students at the University of New Mexico have access to Adobe Express, and they must produce it in Adobe Express, or Canva if they prefer. To create a policy brief in one of those platforms, you can hotwire a newsletter template. But I also have started to create policy brief templates that I share with the students. I do this because the newsletter template can be quite a bit of work to tailor to a policy brief, and some students will do it and others will not.

Then for the final project, just as in an R&R at an academic journal, they need to reply to each of my mid-term comments. They confirm that they have made each edit and they describe what edits they’ve made. They also need to expand the policy brief by one additional page, and add a few more references. In addition, students tell me in writing the degree to which they want their brief to be shared, and so give consent or not by the end of the class, in terms of how far it can go.

When they “submit” the assignments, at both the mid-term and final stages, they don’t submit a PDF but rather a collaborator link in either Adobe Express or Canva. This is an important detail: it makes sure that if we get to the end of the semester and a few edits need to be made, I can just make them.

In the end, these briefs are completed in one semester. Using the method of having a small number of pages with a great deal of focus on each, we have produced deliverables that are more useful to the partner and also more feasible for me in terms of time commitment. In this way of doing things, there is no long report that I need to edit, and videos were just too high stakes, hard to edit, and essentially need a film editing class in order to be successful.

My take home lessons are:

First, maybe you have figured out a better method for groups, but I found that group work in this problem-solving context was very time consuming for me and for the students. I found that you essentially become a conflict manager at some point, which is a large part of the time commitment.

My second take-away is that I think it’s useful to design deliverables that students can finish at a high standard in one semester. Another benefit of policy briefs is that if you can find some funds and print them, they can actually find their way into the hands of policymakers who are working on the issues important to community partners. In any case, when you can give extensive comments at the mid-term, and ask them to hand in a response memo for the final alongside an edited brief, I have found this to be feasible and successful.

Thank you for reading, and I hope some of this helps as you develop your own approaches to teaching with problem-solving. If you want to see all of the details of how I run this, you can see my current syllabus here.