Empowering students to learn and understand decision-making skills is the goal of a project by Lander University Associate Professor of Education Dr. Rachel Schiera.
Schiera was recently awarded a grant that will support her research into decision education and help her and a colleague develop a high school English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum.
The grant was awarded by the Alliance for Decision Education to Schiera and Dr. Mike Sell, a professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Schiera defined decision education as teaching and learning skillful decision-making.
“I am always careful to state that this field is not about teaching people what to decide—this is about teaching people how to decide,” she said.
“This area of education is especially important in today's world, where we are all bombarded with stimuli that attempt to influence our decision-making processes for both good and bad. If we can take the time to educate ourselves and our children on how and why we make the decisions that we do, we may be looking at a future where people are equipped to achieve the outcomes they would like.”
Schiera said the world of books and literature house “the most amazing bank of decision making, stretching back millennia.”
“What if teachers tweaked what they do with those books, taking on discussions and supporting analyses through what we call a ‘decision lens’?” Schiera asked.
The project Schiera and her colleagues are working on aims to develop a curriculum that will pair with ELA classrooms and support students as they learn about decision-making, as well as include writing activities that center on decision-making situations.
Schiera provided a few examples of works that can be studied through a decision-based lens.
She pointed to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and suggested examining Brutus’s choices and decisions by considering his cognitive biases.
“The novel (and film adaptation) The Martian studied through the decision domain of probabilistic thinking and structuring decisions allows us to see that the main character Mark Watney interprets the world as a place where he can predict the likelihood of certain outcomes and craft survival based on those outcomes,” Schiera said.
The news that Schiera had received the grant received high marks from the University community.
“It is exciting that Dr. Schiera’s work on decision education has been recognized by the Alliance for Decision Education through this award,” said Dr. Stephen Bismarck, dean of the College of Education. This grant will help to further her research and, in turn, benefit the faculty and students at Lander University by having firsthand exposure to the curriculum that is developed. At Lander, we support innovative educational practices that impact South Carolina’s PK-12 classrooms, and this funding elevates both the visibility of her important research, as well as Lander’s commitment to scholarship that has direct, positive impacts on learning outcomes for the communities we serve.”