In this activity, gifted and advanced students hone personal assessment skills by analyzing various decision making models.

An important lesson in life is knowing what to do when certain things happen. For example, if the phone rings, answer it. Most people have a pretty good idea how to act when normal daily situations occur. However, what does a person do when the situation is far-off from being normal? Can students learn how to plan for the unexpected as they are preparing to become adults?

How Do We Make Decisions?

Teachers need to impress upon the students that the decisions we make are based on what we think is important and what we value. Unfortunately in this world, there is no absolute judge that can decree whether something is truly good or bad, or right or wrong. That is why we have juries and referees; these are groups of people who come together to pool their experiences and values to reach the best possible decisions. For students, they need to learn to rely upon their own backgrounds and sense of what's appropriate to help them along the path of personal decision making.

It is estimated that the average executive in one business day makes around 200 action decisions, or decisions that effect something or affect someone. These are in addition to the little decisions made about simple things like what kind of sweetener goes in our coffee, or what tie goes best with blue.

Students make decisions every day. Some are simple, some are very difficult. In general, the greater the impact of the decision the more difficult it becomes. To begin the discussion about decision making, first ask the students to consider what their values are. While at first glance it seems like an easy question, it can be difficult trying to pin down exactly what a value is.

Activities:

What is a value? According to the Middle Tennessee State University, “A value started with a belief you were proud of and were willing to affirm, where you had chosen it from alternatives with regard to possible consequences and free from outside pressure to choose any particular thing, and where you had taken action on this belief other than to talk about it and had done this in a regular pattern, not just sporadic times.” In other words, a value, or value system, is a personalized set of beliefs and choices each person makes over a long period of time.

Ask the students to write down what some of their values are – answers will include words like ‘honesty,’ ‘loyalty,’ ‘truthfulness,’ ‘ambition,’ and other assorted worth related terms. These are the words the students use now to describe what is important about them.

But do our values change as the situation changes? As a way to consider this question, ask students to raise their hands if they agree with these ascending value-based questions:

Is it okay to be angry?

Is it okay to yell at a person?

Is it okay to lie?

Is it okay to be cowardly?

Is it okay to kill a person?

After each question, ask some students why they did or did not agree with the statements.

Following this, ask the students if they found themselves thinking things like, "Well, I agree, except when…"

Now engage their higher-order thinking skills. Ask them if their values are always absolute. For example, can you support peace and be willing to kill in war, or if you were in opposition to violence would you use deadly force to protect your family from a dangerous home invader? When you start to chip away at a value does it become a slippery slope? What about when something is done, ‘for the greater good?’ Ask the students if ‘the ends always justify the means.’

After these discussions, return to the Middle Tennessee State University’s definition of a value where it is stated that values occur, “in a regular pattern, not just sporadic times.” Ask the students to personally assess, or to think reflectively about themselves by re-evaluating the values they had written earlier to see if their values could pass the test of time and if they are absolute and will not change no matter what the circumstances.

Other Decision Making Models

To continue the decision making lesson, you can edit and copy these notes as a handout:

Occam's Razor

William of Occam, an English monk from 1285-1349, is credited with founding "The Law of Parsimony," also known as Occam's Razor. This basically states that it is vain to do with more what can be done with less. This means that given two or more conflicting ideas you should choose the one that is the most simple. Or, if an unknown phenomenon or something happens that you can't explain, you should always try to explain it first in terms of what is known. Galileo used this theory quite a bit, as will your parents if your excuse for being home late is too complicated.

Approach/Avoidance Conflict Decision-Making

For the sake of discussion, let's say "Approach" means you want to do something good or fun, like seeing a movie. "Avoidance" means you don't want to do something you don't like, such as making your bed. These are the three possible combinations:

Approach-Approach Conflict

Approach-Avoid Conflict

Avoid-Avoid Conflict

Approach-Avoid is an easy decision, skip the bed making and hit the Cineplex.

Avoid-Avoid is more difficult; it is like “choosing between two evils.” Make the bed or take out the garbage. Great.

Approach-Approach is actually the most difficult choice we have to make when we are faced with two equally attractive options. Hit the movies or hit the beach. Hmmm.

Consensus

Perhaps the best of all decisions is consensus, or the ‘win-win’ approach. Here everyone who has a “stake” in an issue joins together to examine the positives and negatives of an issue, and then to reach a decision that every person involved can live with and support. Consensus is the best decision supported by all, but everyone has to give a little to gain complete support, and decisions can take a long time to happen as everyone needs to be brought onboard. Don't use this method when trying to decide what kind of pizza to get for dinner when the hungry soccer team comes over.

Closure to the Lesson

In the end, students need to understand that since there is no absolute judge who can decree whether something is truly good or bad, or right or wrong, and keeping in mind some of the various decision making models, as much as anything else they need to trust their own judgement and values when making decisions.

Of course, asking for advice from a trusted adult couldn’t hurt either. But, that will be a topic for another day.