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Episode 7.

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The life of an information technology professional who's working in a school is one of solving problems.

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Don't information technology folks in all types of organizations solve problems?

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Of course they do.

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And don't all others in schools. I'm thinking teachers and administrators.

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Spend their time solving problems too.

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Sure, but it is worth taking a closer look at the types of problems they solve

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as it does help us to understand what must happen for IT to meet the needs of users in schools

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and to demonstrate the importance of staying in our lanes.

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Tell me more.

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In 1973, Horace Riddle and Melvin Weber, two scholars from the University of California Berkeley,

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wrote a paper entitled, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.

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In that paper, they differentiated two types of problems.

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The first type comprises those problems that have an identifiable cause or causes,

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and we can understand those causes and the effects of them.

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These problems are also generally recognized by everyone as problems that should be solved,

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and everyone tends to agree when they are solved.

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These problems sound easy to solve.

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Well, not really. They might be important, difficult to solve, and ethically challenging,

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but we do have a way to solve them.

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Think about the strategies used by scientists and engineers.

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They isolate causes, investigate effects, and test things before drawing conclusions

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if they're scientists or building things if they're engineers.

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What kinds of problems have been solved in this way?

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Sure. They're commonly taught at all levels of education because, well, they're effective for lots and lots of problems.

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Now, Riddle and Weber wrote more than 50 years ago, and they said important social problems,

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things like healthcare and medical procedures, transportation, sanitary systems in cities,

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and agriculture were among the important and challenging social problems that have been solved through tame methods.

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Wait, you just said tame methods. What do you mean?

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Riddle and Weber use the word tame to describe these problems that we can easily identify.

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We can understand and we can agree that they are problems that should be solved.

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And we solve these tame problems through engineering and methods that replicate science,

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so there's a match between the tame nature of the problem and the tame strategies that we use to solve them.

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I think I get it. You said Riddle and Weber described two types of problems.

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Yes, wicked was applied to the second type of problem.

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Sounds scary.

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Not really. Wicked problems tend to be ill-defined and have important social dimensions.

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What do you mean by ill-defined?

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First, it is difficult to identify and isolate the causes of wicked problems.

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When framing a problem, we might miss important causes, we might identify causes that are important when they're really not,

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or we may identify situations that are problems for some, but not for everyone.

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All problem solvers base their work on certain assumptions.

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When working on wicked problems, those assumptions may be false.

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Compared to tame problems, they are very likely to be false.

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Second, the social dimensions have important implications for the problem solver.

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Different individuals or different groups may experience the solution differently.

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Of course, they might not even have perceived the problem to be a problem in the first place.

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When the solution is implemented, they may find the problem remains, work out worse,

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or they may find that new problems were generated.

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I think I see how problems can be wicked. But does that mean they cannot be solved?

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Well, they are solved, but there is unlikely to be agreement that the solution is good.

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People can provide reasonable and accurate evidence that a solution was good,

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but others can provide equally reasonable and accurate evidence that the solution is bad.

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But if we met the goal, doesn't the solution have to be good?

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No, think about transportation.

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One of the problems Riddle and Weber claimed was improved through tame problem solving.

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Neighborhoods were displaced to build highways, city centers became urban sprawl, pollution,

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and now climate change are all problems that we can attribute to transportation.

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How we judge those solutions is inherently subjective.

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So, how should we classify problems of technology in schools?

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Are they tame or wicked?

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It really depends on the problems you're talking about.

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We see both types of problems and they must be solved, well, they must be addressed.

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We never really solve wicked problems.

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Before we talk about the types of problems that we encounter in schools,

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it's probably important to recognize that these problems are addressed through very different methods,

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and we really can't solve one type of problem by using the methods that are designed to solve the other type of problem.

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In schools, we often see folks using tame methods to solve wicked problems.

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Now, I don't want to sound like I'm being critical.

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Tame methods work well and we should use them when they're appropriate,

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but we don't often include the concept of wicked problems when we prepare educators or IT professionals

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or most professionals for any other field either.

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Okay, let's start with tame problems we might encounter when dealing with information technology in schools.

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Keeping an IT system up and running is a perfect example of a tame problem,

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and IT professionals keep them up and running using tame solutions.

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We know our systems, we know what each part is supposed to do, and we know the symptoms when any part fails.

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We have lots of folks that can help us to isolate and fix problems,

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and we can usually get things up and running in a relatively short time, unless, of course, we have to order replacement parts.

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So IT folks isolate, fix, and test their systems,

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and almost everyone is happy to see the green lights flashing and our network connections restored when the systems are fixed.

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Okay, now what about wicked problems?

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Yeah, that's just about every other decision made in a school.

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In classrooms, teachers do the best, but each student is dealing with a different set of circumstances that affect how they learn.

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When I was teaching, I may have planned the same math lesson for different groups of seventh graders,

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but if one class happened to meet after lunch and there had been drama in the cafeteria, which they usually does, it is in the middle school,

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that may have exerted important effects on my students' learning.

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And I may not have included that drama in my planning, although I did it for long enough I should have been prepared.

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But at least we have standards to set our curriculum goals.

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Sure, but those have probably been decided by someone or some group other than students, teachers, and others who care about education.

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We may well have students who have met every standard,

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but if they don't feel prepared to succeed at whatever they want to do next, or if they get there and find that those standards in fact did not prepare them,

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then they will have a much different judgment of their education than the advocates for the standards will have.

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You seem to be getting off the topic.

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Yes, you're right. Well, wait, maybe you're not.

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Wicked problems are addressed.

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You know, these solutions or supposed solutions that we implement are judged differently by different people.

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While addressing a wicked problem, we may find we missed a cause, and we must go back and re-solve the problem so we address that cause.

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We may identify a different change or an addition that may be seen as an improvement that we must make in our solution.

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We may even find that we were solving the wrong problem all along, and any of those can cause us to restart our solution finding.

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Can't we all just decide what we are trying to do and do it?

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Sure, but we must realize that that will result in a solution that is really not a solution for a part of the population that we serve with the IT in our schools.

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And we do that all the time, you know.

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Sometimes we run out of resources, sometimes we decide that a solution is good enough, you know, it satisfies us, and sometimes we just decide to move on.

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The best solutions we find when addressing wicked problems are those in which we maximize the perceptions that the situation has been improved.

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The best solvers of wicked problems are open to revisiting their solutions.

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The most respected solvers of wicked problems are transparent.

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They admit their solutions may not be optimal, and they cooperate those who want to improve them further.

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So you started off by saying folks need to stay in their lanes.

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IT folks tend to be very good at solving tame problems that they encounter when they're managing IT.

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They need to stay in their lane and recognize that those skills may be ineffective for addressing teaching problems or the political problems associated with managing schools.

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And they certainly should not follow the lead of wicked problem solvers when they're managing IT.

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IT problems can be objectively evaluated, so we solve them in ways that they should be solved.

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When it comes to designing changes and improvements, we must collaborate with others because they know those wicked problems better than we do,

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and they are in a better position to evaluate the solutions than the IT folks are.