Vignettes are richer, more complex, and more motivating than text .
If the youth of today are to lead our society of tomorrow toward happiness and prosperity we must provide them with the neces sary cognitive tools to hammer out new ideas, shatter specious arguments and information, and construct informed and intelligent choices. While there are many reasons for widespread scientific illiteracy, certainly a primary factor is the amount of time students spend on mundane non-thinking tasks such as watching television. Specific videotape-based vignettes are described which take advantage of the medium's motivational potency to fine tune students' thinking skills and scientific understandings relative to environmental problem solving. Process knowledge involves inform ation-processing strategies that create questions, generate predictions, develop hypotheses, identify relationships, draw inferences, analyze data, evaluate conclusions, and in general, solve problems. Giving students the opportunity to explore, identify, and discuss their ideas and thinking processes with their peers.