Teaching Creative Problem-Solving to Children

Bob Eberle and Bob Stanish agree that creative problem-solving is a basic skill and a good sense approach to modern day living and learning. As a practical style of learning, creative problem-solving has significant transfer value.

In their book, “CPS for Kids: A Resource Book for Teaching Creative Problem-Solving to Children”, Eberle and Stanish share their 6-step approach to creative problem-solving. They show how to start with becoming more alert and developing an awareness which stimulates recognition of situations or conditions that need improvement or correction. From this starting point of becoming more observant, the reader is led to the point of generating creative ideas with potential solutions to the problems at hand. But the process doesn’t end with an idea. No, it takes the reader all the way through to a final step that is often omitted when problem-solving techniques are taught. Solution-finding is only part of the end product. Implementing a workable solution is the rest of the end product, and the final step in Eberle’s and Stanish’s process. The reader is taken all the way from waking up to the call for solutions, to developing the final plan to implement their best solution.

While this book emphasizes application in the elementary school environment, its value in teaching at all levels should not be under-estimated. Students need to be challenged to think, and this book helps teachers, parents, and students alike to seek out those challenges and to embrace them enthusiastically.