This report argues that the ability to solve problems with others is a crucial skill for our young people in the workplace of the future but the current education system does little to support it.

Key findings

• Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) is an increasingly important skill to teach young people in order to prepare them for the future.
• Despite strong evidence for its impact, CPS is rarely taught in schools but if structured well it can reinforce knowledge and improve attainment.
• Significant barriers exist for teachers implementing this practice, from behaviour management to curriculum coverage, to task-design.
• For CPS to gain ground, a concerted shift is needed including teacher training, better resources and system level support.

This report is part of Nesta’s ongoing commitment to equipping young people with the skills they need to succeed. It makes a series of recommendations on how organisations and policymakers can help support and embrace the implementation of CPS. Nesta is following this up with a series of small-scale pilots of aligned programmes in order to evaluate impact and explore how CPS can be implemented in a range of practical settings.

Policy recommendations

• Stimulate production of quality collaborative problem-solving (CPS) resources and training, from primary education onwards.
• Fund existing, aligned programmes to scale and evaluate impact.
• Educate and involve the out-of-school learning sector and volunteer educators.
• Develop smarter collaborative problem-solving assessment methods.
• Help higher education organisations and MOOCs to track what works.

Authors

Rose Luckin, Ed Baines, Mutlu Cukurova and Wayne Holmes, with Michael Mann