UNESCO TEACHING AND LEARNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE 
MODULE 27 | COMMUNITY PROBLEM SOLVING
Activity 1 - Local concerns
Q1: List five problems you are concerned about in your community.
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Q2: What skills or experience do you have that might be helpful in finding a solution to any of these problems?

 
Q3: What are you currently doing to help address any of these problems?

 
Activity 2 - What is Community Problem Solving?
Q4: Answer the following questions about the case study.
What do you feel about the circumstances and events in the case study?

 What do you think were the learning outcomes for the student?

In what ways are the teaching/learning strategies used in the case study different from strategies most often used in your school?

What skills did the teacher need to teach this way?

What problems do you think the teachers in the case study might have faced when they included this activity as part of the curriculum?

 
Q5: Identify which of the eight steps of Community Problem Solving that were used and in what order. 

 
Q6: Use your understanding of the Park Beach and Nepal case studies to identify four distinctive features of Community Problem Solving as a teaching/learning strategy. 
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Q7: Answer the following questions to plan a Community Problem Solving project for students in one of the classes you teach.
Exploring Community Problem Solving
Name a problem in your community that you think students would be interested in solving.

Selecting a problem
Why is this important to your community?

Do your students have the skills to be able to tackle this problem at the present time?

Do you have time to undertake the entire Community Problem Solving process for this problem, or might a smaller problem be better to begin with?

Evaluating and developing student skills
What skills do your students need to undertake Community Problem Solving?

What kinds of guidance might you need to provide?

Investigating
What is the current status of this problem in the community?

Are there any conflicts of interest among groups in the community over this problem? If so, what are they?

How can decisions be made to resolve the issue?

Developing visions
What are students’ visions for the future in relation to this problem?

What are the alternatives?

Which vision do they prefer and why?

 
Planning actions
What changes will bring the situation closer to their visions of a sustainable future?

What barriers must be overcome to allow these changes to take place?

List the steps that must be taken to make the changes. This is the plan of action.
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2.	
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5.	
Others	
How can the plan of action be evaluated?

Taking actions
How will the planned actions solve the problem? 
	
What is the role of students in deciding on these actions?

Evaluating actions and changes
What actions were taken? 

What changes resulted?

To what extent are these changes the same as the vision?

How were barriers overcome?

What was learnt from Community Problem Solving?

Activity 3 - Developing students’ skills
Q8: List the steps you usually follow in teaching a new skill.

Activity 4 - Planning to use Community Problem Solving
Q9: Identify some teaching ideas that could anticipate and prevent problems such as:
Problem	Teaching ideas	
Some students might not be used to teachers asking them to choose the topic (i.e. the local problem) they want to study.		
Some students could be puzzled when the teacher sets a problem but does not tell them the answer. 		
Some students lose their concentration when they are taken out of the classroom on fieldwork.		
Sometimes local problems of interest to students may be the cause of controversy in the community.		
(Can you anticipate any other problems?)	

Q10: Rank criteria for selecting an issue in order of importance. 
	Rank
1 = most important
5 = least important 	
The locations are readily accessible to students.		
There is no serious risk to the safety of students at these places.		
The projects are within the range of ability of students.		
There is a genuine need in the community for this problem to be solved.		
Students believe the problem is significant to them. 		

Q11: Identify suitable teaching and learning activities that could be used at each of the 8 steps in Community Problem Solving. Activities explained in other modules could be adapted and modified for use in many of these steps.
Steps	Teaching and Learning Activities 	
1. Exploring Community Problem Solving	Tell a story about how a community group solved a problem (Module 19). 
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2. Selecting a problem	Strategic Questioning (Module 1). 
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3. Evaluating and developing student skills	Use a role play to develop student skills in values analysis (Module 20). 
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4. Investigating	Students work in pairs to investigate changes in the community and how various people feel about them (Modules 21, 24). 
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5. Developing visions	Use the ‘preferable’ and ‘probable’ futures exercise (Module 2) to help students develop visions about the future. 
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6. Planning actions 	Use Future Problem Solving strategies to develop an action plan (Module 23). 
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7. Taking actions 	Class presents their Action Plan to the local mayor (Module 24). 
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8. Evaluating actions and changes 	Invite a guest from the community to share how the changes have affected him or her. 
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Activity 5 - Reflection
Q12: How useful do you find the guidelines for teaching through Community Problem Solving in this sample lesson plan? Why?

Q13: Identify how easy or difficult it will be for you to do introduce each of the eight steps in Community Problem Solving in your teaching situation.

Q14: After you have trialed using Community Problem Solving with a class, review the process using questions such as these.
What aspects of the Community Problem Solving project were really successful?

Was there anything that you forgot to plan?

Did your students need more preparation before the fieldwork? In what area?

What changes will you make to this project before doing it with another class?

 Other comments/observations?