THE SUMMATIVE TAKE-AWAYS
Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation There is a mismatch between what science knows and businesses practice. Experiments shows that rewards as motivation only work when the task is mechanical, simple, and not requiring cognitive skills or creativity. Typical “If-Then”rewards focus thinking to a single-minded frame, whereas solving problems needs expansive, creative, out-of-the-box thinking. Intrinsic motivation may have better results. This kind of motivation works with three principals: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. An example of autonomous work is Google’s 20% time, where employees work on any project they want. Historically this “free play” time produces about 50% of Google’s new products. Another example of autonomy in work is the ROWE workplace - results only work environment. John Seely Brown - The Culture of Learning in a World of Constant Flux In a world in constant flux, learning will need to amplify curiosity so that we can keep up and create. Understanding is socially constructed, so learning is done effectively in group study. This can be done virtually. Dusty and his cohort of aerial surfers demonstrates that perhaps what is needed is a deep questing disposition. Studying the MMOG World of Warcraft shows that this complex game is a joint collective agency. In both these examples, competitors or gamers are willing to fail, fail, fail in order to hone a craft so they can ultimately master a skill and succeed. In both examples, the task is considered fun all the while learning. Play is, in fact, a key aspect of learning and also of creating or changing a culture. Man is a thinker in three ways: homosapien (man as knower), homofaber (man as maker), and homoludens (man as player). When we utilize all three forms of learning and thinking, we are entering into an activity of deep tinkering. All of these qualities combined can create a new culture of learning for the 21st century. Howard Gardner: Five Minds for the Future All thought, generally speaking, has commonalities, but every academic discipline (history, science, math, arts) has its own mental forms, or required ways of thinking. The five minds can be broken into two categories: cognitive and social.
In the world of education creativity is as important as literacy. Creativity requires the ability to risk being wrong. If you aren’t prepared to make a mistake, you won’t ever come up with anything new. We naturally possess creativity as children and seem to be educated out of it. We are taught NOT to make mistakes. Our entire 19th century education system is designed to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. In design it is a protracted process of getting to the university level. It values a hierarchy of subject material with math and language at the top and the arts at the bottom. It does not necessarily honor what we now know about intelligence - that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. This system is not working for the 21st century and will not serve us well for the future. THE COMMENTARY Most of these video presentations were eight to ten years ago. They all emphasize how technology and innovation is driving knowledge and skills to grow exponentially and that what we teach today may be obsolete within years. Given this fact, it is heartening to see that these video presentations themselves are still relevant. I say it is heartening because the thinking around education seems to have evolved to guiding principles that will be able to steer us through the unpredictability of the technology age. NVUSD’s 4C’s goals of 21st century learning: critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration,and a fifth goal often mentioned in our reading on 21st century learning, global citizenship, are mentioned in all of the videos. Gardner’s five minds list is almost a direct reiteration of these goals, although it is probably more accurate to say that Gardner is partly responsible for the existence of the 4 C’s learning goals. John Seely Brown emphasizes collaborative learning and playing, or creativity. Dan Pink and Sir Ken Robinson also emphasize the need to exercise creative thinking in order to address the needs for the future. What I find so fascinating about these “new” goals for education is that none of them is actually particularly new. All of these qualities, either singly or collectively, have existed in humanity for centuries or even millenniums. It is actually because humans have the ability to be creative, think critically, communicate, and collaborate that we are where we are today - in the midst of an age of discovery, invention, and flux. The Renaissance had much of the same characteristics as this period in time and the Industrial Revolution itself was a result of increases in ingenuity in business. Humans have always been inventing, problem solving, and creating in order to help ourselves. It’s almost as if we are seeing the need to re-emphasize these human qualities for this next phase in history because our education system (at least in the U.S.) has devalued them in an educational system that was designed by the universities and the US Labor Department to fit the needs of the Industrial Revolution. There is one learning goal for a 21st education that I feel should be considered. It is hinted at in Gardner’s Respectful and Ethical Minds, in Seely Brown’s notion of a deep questing disposition, and when Sir Robinson bemoans that the arts are at the bottom of the hierarchy of education worldwide. I’ll come at it from the content of Louis R. Mobley’s philosophy for his IBM executive training philosophy that is outlined in the Forbes article “Can Creativity Be Taught?” The fifth principle comes from Mobley’s discovery “that creativity is highly correlated with self-knowledge. It is impossible to overcome biases if we don’t know they are there, and Mobley’s school was designed to be one big mirror.” Acquiring self-knowledge should be a learning goal. By self-knowledge I do not mean naval-gazing, being self-centered, or figuring out what I want in life. I mean something closer to what Gardner mentioned when he spoke of having an abstract view of yourself in connection to your context - your family, your school, your community, your country, your world. To this should be added, I believe, being connected to your historical context as a member of humanity. We should remember that we can’t experiment, innovate, create, nor play our own history as the human race but we certainly shouldn’t ignore it. We would be prudent to study it, understand it, connect to it, communicate it - all so that we can glean the best from human achievement and avoid the colossal mistakes made. If you want to do away with your own biases, study humanity’s worst transgressions to know what we are capable of perpetrating. With Sir Ken, I wish for a return on an emphasis of studying the humanities and arts so that we do not lose understanding of a rich history of philosophy, political science, literature, music, art, and drama. Within these academic disciplines is a whole history of thought, experience, perspective, and expression that can aid us on a quest for self-knowledge and help us form ethical minds. Another 21st century learning model buzz word or catch phrase that I ponder and observe is the call to prepare our students for the “global economy”. If our 19th century educational model failed when the economy for which it was designed began to change (the Industrial Age), does that mean that we are currently making a similar mistake by trying to design an educational system to meet THIS present and predicted economy and it, too, will fail when this economy changes? Is education about creating producers and consumers for an economy? I throw out the consideration that economic ends are certainly pragmatic and necessary, but education should be about creating thinking people who have studied and have at least tried to understand the nature of the universe and the nature of humankind so that they will always be prepared to handle whatever either (the universe or humankind) throws at them.
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Free Play is what I ask of my students when we start out in clay and then after we have learned some skills and rules about how clay works they are asked again to just create something with size limits only. It's a wonderful way for them to be come creative...to create! :) enjoyed reading your blog.
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It is profound how you successfully connected all the videos together. I suppose that means you are displaying a synthesizing mind. I agree with you that we cannot build our educational system simply around the global market. True innovation can only happen when we allow our students to explore completely, new and radical ideas. These ideas might even seem without purpose because they are so forward thinking that their use is yet to be understood. It is easy to imagine how many people reacted to Mark Zuckerberg with confused disinterest. Post online? Who cares? Yet, his unique, creative and innovate thinking led to a revolutionized future. Allowing our students that same creative expression might result in a future that we cannot yet comprehend.
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Nai Saelee
4/6/2017 07:02:08 pm
Nancy,
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