Future Problem Solving (FPS) was introduced at Manurewa High School in 2015.
It’s a highly regarded and well-researched international educational programme that develops creative, critical and caring thinking skills. Students grapple with global and community issues, identify underlying problems and create positive solutions to those issues. Above all, it aims to give young people the skills to design and promote positive futures as citizens of the 21st Century.
This year, our awesome FPS coach Glenis Martin is working with four groups of students, both Year 9 and Year 10. The teams are competing in the FPS Middle Division against students from all over New Zealand.
It’s a year-long process. What’s been happening so far?
The first task for the teams was to complete a booklet on their given topic – Treatment of Animals. To support them, the students spent the first term learning the first three steps of the FPS process:
- finding challenges / problems within a given future scene
- determining the most important problem
- brainstorming solutions
In the second term, they learnt the next three steps of the FPS process:
- selecting criteria by which to judge solution
- judging the solution
- making a detailed plan for implementation of the solution. The topic was Disappearing Languages.
In the booklet section:
Team 1 gained a first ranking (Jessica Cochrane, Simran Naicker, Jarrod Clark, Ji Qun Huang, Jaanvi Mudalier)
Team 2 gained second ranking (Nikita Aubrey Wihongi, Jeremie Lee, Saintleechey Kalipatama, Harleen Bhathal)
Team 3 (John Chen, Okesene Fotu, Aimee Lew, Aaron Lew) and Team 4 Eru Te Kira, Shivnesh Kumar, Mychaela Tovine-Ikitoa, Janny Latthiwan-Jones) gained third equal ranking
This term, the teams are working towards completing the qualifying exam. They must do this in two and a quarter hours, all working together. The topic for the qualifying exam is Recovering from Natural Disasters.
We had a team make it all the way to the international finals in 2015. How did they go?
The team was Aimee Lew, Aaron Lew, John Chen and Okesene Fatu. The event took place on June 1-5, 2016, at Michigan State University in the United States. The topic for the Internationals was Energy of the Future.
The Internationals was a great event in that 2000 students from all over the world attended. This year there were teams from Australia, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Portugal, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA and New Zealand.
In the middle division, our team competed against 70 other teams. The results were very pleasing in that they placed 14th.
What do students enjoy about FPS?
In discussion with the current FPS students they have seen the FPS programme benefiting them in that:
- it is challenging
- they have become more articulate in how they write
- they are enjoying working and sharing ideas as a team.
To keep track of our FPS progress in 2016, follow their Facebook page