Developing Decision-Making Skills for Uncertain Conditions: The Challenge of Educating Effective Emergency Managers

Abstract

Effective decision making under conditions of uncertainty involves the ability to recognize risk, formulate strategies for action, and coordinate with others in an effort to bring an incident under control quickly. Learning to make decisions effectively in urgent, uncertain conditions is not easily achieved in a classroom setting. Educators face a particular challenge in creating a learning environment in which students can develop this ability in preparation and/or support for careers in emergency management. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) suggests that higher-level thinking skills facilitate the kind of problem-solving skills and subject mastery helpful to decision making under conditions of uncertainty. A content analysis of syllabi on emergency management demonstrates that instructors, in practice, focus disproportionately on lower-level thinking skills. We present a set of propositions informed by SoTL and the study of cognition to design curricula that facilitate the development of higher-order thinking skills that support decision making under conditions of uncertainty.