As pupils face complex problems occurring within different contexts, such as educational, and social-psychological, they’ll require a range of skills to solve, manage and engage with them from the early stage of their life and education. Overall, learning process aims to prepare independent and motivated students to be able to compete in a world of complicated problems. As viewed by (Mulhayatiah et al., 2019), one of the competencies of the 21st -century is problem-solving skills. These competencies mean the “ability of a person to find a solution through a search that involves the acquisition and organization of information to achieve a goal. The problem-solving ability owned by the students can be identified through the ability to organize and use the knowledge, as well as connecting one concept with another when solving the problems”.
Moreover, research results point out that “there is no general way for solving different problems. Problem varies in their conditions and difficulty and demand to use different methods” (Szabo et al., 2020). Teachers in the classroom create critical and creative activities to develop students’ abilities and skills, either way in school or in their social relationships, consequently being ready to solve problems in different contexts. Simultaneously, teachers in the classroom could prepare their pupils and equip them with a set of tools they will need to seek solutions, and gain knowledge with skills to solve problems. For instance, educating “pupils how complex choices can be, formulating and sharing relevant arguments, judging others’ arguments and opinions, helping pupils to build up a diagram, a scheme, or a map in creating a possibility for dynamic, collaborative, and in develop pupils’ life skills such as flexibility, leadership, initiative, and social skills” (Szabo et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, the theoretical literature agrees on a method involving sets of steps that facilitate and support pupils in acquiring problems-solving skills, as below: define and understand the problem, make a plane, list all the possible solutions, evaluate the options, select the best solution, execute the plan and feedback. These steps are a general strategy that could be a great way to get pupils ready to solve real problems in their daily life. That is, classroom problem-solving activities make a great role to educate pupils on how to manage problems rather than become disappointed in each rough situation.
To sum up, enhancing pupils’ ability to analyze problems and innovate a practical, and flexible solution to solve them is one of the most beneficial skills they can acquire in their own and social life. What’s more, pupils’ finding a solution to deal with the different problems is a primary important skill of education in the 21st -century to address challenging situations by including learning process a specific strategy of problem-solving such as critical thinking activities and solving problems in a broader context in Pupils’ life.
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