Problems-First Learning

"Walk into the classroom. Sit at a desk. Listen to a teacher drone for an hour. Retain nothing. Leave. The current educational pattern of lecture, listen, forget runs rampant through schools across the world. Teaching with the Future in Mind offers the problems-first instructional method, which flips lessons on their heads. Rather than offering students information and having them solve a problem, present a problem first and help students figure out how to solve that problem. This technique sits at the core of author Ted McCain's book, along with additional methods, such as introducing role-play into the classroom and broadening lessons to encompass whole-mind learning. A lot of teaching has become stagnant because teachers simply do what they know: stand in front of students and talk. McCain looks to amend that by bringing the problems to the students and have them fully engage in the learning process"--