Have you ever encountered a problem so bad that it was impossible to come up with a good solution? Or the solutions you came up with just created even more problems. This is a "wicked problem" and exactly what I experienced with my classmates, Abby Coleman and Carley Ballou, as we unpacked the wicked problem of book banning in the United States of America to present it in the below multimodal presentation using Genially.
Unpacking the Problem
To accurately understand the many layers this problem contains, we asked our
selves many questions to see why this problem of book banning is so wicked. We also took a moment to sit in the seat of various stakeholders to conceptualize the different viewpoints around the problem. From there, we dug into research about the history of book banning, which books were being banned throughout time and gathered the perspectives of educators, students, parents, board members and political activist groups.
What If?
With this better understanding, we were able to come up with four potential solutions to our problem.
Place ratings on books.
Educate educators on teaching/discussing sensitive topics
Community education as the beginning of the challenge process.
Parents being in control at home but not in the school setting.
Outcomes:
Each of these potential solutions will also bring out more questions but at the same time can provide a better understanding of cultural competence and sensitivity, facilitate challenging discussions around sensitive topics, create an inclusive curriculum and potentially help avoid overreactions to immediate banning.
References
See the last two slides of our presentation for a list of all the resources used to make our presentation.
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