How to make students creative problem-solvers with Tacy Trowbridge, head of Adobe’s global education programs.

As head of Adobe’s global education programs, Tacy Trowbridge manages the company’s Education Exchange, an online community where more than 700,000 educators share ideas and resources and get training on digital media tools. But for all the cool tools, Trowbridge’s overarching mission is to promote the teaching of creative problem-solving, a process that shifts the focus from students being passive consumers of information to being active creators of ideas and solutions. With the pace of change quickening, the world needs to train students to be “creative problem solvers, folks who can help us invent the future,” Trowbridge said. So, what does teaching creative problem-solving look like? Trowbridge says educators need to give students voice, let them figure out a problem that they want to solve and give them an authentic audience. It’s not about all students working toward one correct answer, it’s about students wrestling with problems and coming up with solutions on their own. Research showed near unanimous agreement among educators that teaching creative problem-solving is essential. But it also showed that schools are only teaching 20 percent of the underlying skills. There are lots of barriers; in one study, 70 percent of teachers blamed policies that create learning environments that discourage creative problem-solving. Altering that environment will require big changes, both in how teachers engage students and in how the government measures educational outcomes.