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Collaborative Problem Solving: Social and Developmental Considerations

Skill at solving complex problems in teams of people with varying backgrounds and expertise is needed to address many of the pressing social, environmental, health, resource, and economic problems in the world today. There are several indicators of this new reality. Social collaborative skills are increasingly valued in the workplace, and people with these skills make up a substantial part of the changing labor market in the United States (Deming, 2015). Team science is seen as instrumental for tackling real world “grand challenge” problems (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2005; National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, 2011; Social and Behavioral Science Team Annual Report, 2016). And collaborative learning in the classroom is being used effectively for student learning across the curriculum, including the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2018; Sawyer, 2014). In this light, Graesser and his colleagues (2018) concentrate on the need to train young people in collaborative problem solving (CPS) in order to prepare them for the 21st century workforce. They describe two ways that psychological science can contribute to this endeavor: by conducting basic research on CPS, including the design and implementation of CPS training for youth and by working in interdisciplinary teams that use CPS to reach productive ends. So what might be effective ways of imparting CPS skills to young people? I say “ways” because it is unlikely that any single method will suffice in engendering such a large set of skills across a sizable and diverse range of problems. Moreover, support for developing and using these skills will need to be sustained over time and to accommodate changes in knowledge, technology, and personnel; new methods will supplant ones that no longer work. Research conducted in laboratory and classroom settings, which forms the basis of my remarks and was cited by Graesser et al. (2018), offers some useful ideas and some cautionary tales for designing this training. However, it is important to state at the outset that this research concentrates mainly on face-to-face interaction and the learning of classroombased subject matter—both of which differ from the type of training envisioned by Graesser and his colleagues. Nonetheless, I believe this research offers useful insights, particularly regarding the social and developmental aspects of CPS training, that warrant attention as this work proceeds. But first, it is important to mention some distinctions between collaboration in the classroom and the workplace.