Crafting Your Overarching Learning Goal Statements

We know that clear Overarching Learning Goal statements written in student friendly language is essential for both students and parents to be able to access a clear understanding of what students need to know and be able to do at the end of a unit of study. In the previous series of posts, we have looked into a variety of resources and policy documents that should help in the process of writing these statements. The following resources should be gathered so that you and your writing team can begin the process of crafting the statements:

• your collaborative brainstorming around what you and your team value as a teaching and learning team
• your notes and brainstorming that was generated when looking through the front matter of the curriculum
• the big ideas and essential learning found in your curriculum
• your notes that connect the instructional content with the assessment protocols from Growing Success (2010) (e.g. learning skills and habits of mind)
• the connections that you have made to modern learning competencies
• the connections that you have made to the school context

When writing your Overarching Learning goal statements, there are some basic guidelines that you should consider. First of all, you need to keep in mind that you should be creating three but no more than five pithy statements that encompass the overall learning that students need to demonstrate by the end of the learning period. Secondly, it is also important to recognize that these statements need to be able to encompass the required content and skills learning as outlined by the curriculum document, as students must successfully demonstrate the requirements of all the overall expectations for a course. Thirdly, students should be able to access the big ideas within the overarching learning goals because they are the ones that are being assessed. Even if the students are not entirely clear on the exact meaning of the goal, or struggle to envision what it looks like, at the beginning of the learning cycle, they should be articulated in such a way that students are going to be able to access them. Remember that the overarching learning goal statements that you are writing is about student learning and needs to be manageable for students. The aim is to provide meaningful context for what the students  want to learn and need to learn.

At this point, I am going to be using my own experience as much as possible of the work that my departmental team and I have been working on for the past several years. I say this because it is essential that you recognize that this is a process and not a destination in improving student experience in your classroom. Even when you are “done” writing the overarching learning goal statements, there is ongoing reflective work and course or program improvement plans that can be developed to implement the OLGs effectively.

With my writing team, we have three teachers: my visual arts colleague, my media arts colleague and myself. Within the department there are other teams: dance, drama and music. These teachers however do not have teaching partners within the building, so they have worked with colleagues from other schools from around the district. Initially we started the journey all going down the same path, but with different ideas of what overarching learning goals should look like and how to encompass them in the day to day experiences with students, based on the subject areas we teach. Much of the initial work that we had done we talked about with each other over impromptu meetings over lunch or as we talked with each other before the school day started. Through this ongoing process of reflection and dialogue we were surprised to see that at the end of our writing process, the overarching learning goals across the department were in fact aligned with each other. As a result, we now have overarching concepts that unify not just individual courses and subject pathways within the arts, but also a whole departmental approach that we use for the experiences of all the students who opt to take dance, drama, media art, music or visual art. I must emphasize that the unity in thinking is based on the early discussions and collaborative team work that we fostered together as a team.

The categories under which all of our overarching learning goals include: creation, accuracy, purposeful decision making / critical thinking, expanding vocabulary and cultural connections. I am going to spend a few minutes going through the connections that I have made to the process discussed in prior posts, and also expand on how I envision the overarching learning goals to adapt as we begin to prepare for our first revision cycle to further refine these statements.

CREATION: I responsibly create refined and meaningful artworks.

In our early discussions as a team, one of the key concepts that emerged time and time again is that we wanted students to graduate from The Arts department at our school, was that they needed to be meaning makers.  It is essential, for us that students can not only interpret their world and experiences, but making meaning out of those interpretations. Meaning making we believe requires a different set of skills than those primarily concerned with interpretation. Understanding meaning through analysis and interpretation is only part of the process, which we do through what is called the Critical Analysis Process.

Diagram of the Critical Analysis Process (CAP) from the front matter of the 2010 Revised Arts Curriculum.

We also recognized that students needed the capacity for generative and divergent thinking around the ideas, concepts and issues that were of interest to them for them to create meaningful work, and that in many cases students required time and practice to learn these skills because students had been conditioned to think linearly through their prior learning experiences. (See the work of Sir Ken Robinson for more information.) In the Arts we have a second thinking process called The Creative Process, which focusses specifically on idea generation how to develop finished artworks.

Diagram of the Creative Process (CP) from the front matter of the 2010 Revised Arts Curriculum.

Prior to these discussions, we had learned that teaching of these processes had been essentially separated and student learning was compartmentalized. Certain learning tasks were about the analysis and others were about the idea generation. Out thinking began to shift and we started to see that these two processes were actually interconnected, essentially like two cogs: as one turned so did the other. After discussion some of our team members digging deeper into nature of these processes (See Ruggerio) and have affirmed our beliefs. Meaning making is about the intersection of interpretation and idea generation.

A second core idea that was valued through team discussion is that the works that students create need to be refined. In the case of visual arts, this means that artworks are “exhibition ready” – they are worthy of being put up on display for others to see. This related to the creative process once again, which is a such a significant part of what happens in the classroom on a daily basis. We based this idea that students need to develop the capacity for resilliance in the face of challenges. Persistence, as a habit of mind, is at the core of creative and critical thinking. For the Arts, to determine whether a student has become resilient, we are able to look at how well they move through the creative and critical analysis processes in order to develop and refine the appearance of the artwork, but also over the course of the semester how a student is able to create increasingly complex ideas in the work they produce.

The third key element here is the word “responsibly” which we took directly from the learning skills from Growing Success (2010).  Responsibility can take many forms in the creation of art – any where from how to use visual research ethically, to use and care of materials and of course the impact that art has on the environment. By referencing responsibility in this Overarching Learning Goal Statement, we are acknowledge one of the overall expectations in our curriculum.

C3. Responsible Practices: demonstrate an understanding of responsible practices related to visual arts.

-AVI4M0, 2010 Revised Visual Arts Curriculum, Ontario

Responsibility is also tied explicitly to our school mission, in which we are promoting environmental leadership and stewardship. Students are encouraged to think about how they consume materials and the lasting impact that their art making may have on the environment in their choice of creative media.

It is not necessary for each of the learning goals to connect to all the resources and brainstorming that you had completed previously. The statements are about encompassing the rich learning that is possible, and to provide purpose and context for the learning that we ask students to engage in on a regular basis.

Before you begin writing your own Overarching Learning Goal Statements, review the notes that you have created. Sort the ideas that were generated to find commonalities between the ideas from all of the different resources. Once you have the ideas sorted, label them: what is the unifying concept that ties all of the thinking together in this category. From there, you will have the foundation for your statements.

1. What are the central ideas that emerge from your discussions, reflections and investigations? (Knowledge)
2. When might students be learning of these core ideas (e.g. activities, current assessments, etc.) , but not necessarily have this learning reflected in their learning of the overall expectations? (Prediction)
3. Of the ideas that you and your team has generated, which ideas are most important? Rank your ideas from most to least important, and be prepared to justify your ranking to your colleagues. (Analysis)
4. How might these bigger ideas be connected, either in terms of the knowledge that students are expected to know or the skills they are required to perform? (Synthesis)

 

June 18, 2017 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Assessment, Evaluation & Instruction, Critical Thinking, Educational Reform, Leadership, Professional Learning, Uncategorized

Where to Begin When Writing Overarching Learning Goals!

Admittedly, beginning the process of writing your overarching learning goals can be somewhat daunting. The first place to start is to seek someone who has gone through the process, learned a thing or two about what works, what doesn’t, and what they are currently working on improving to make even better. It is important to remember that writing the Overarching Learning Goal statements and their related success criteria is a process, and will take several iterations before you get to something that you believe works appropriately for you as a teacher and is effectively accessible to students and their parents.

Once you have identified someone who is willing to work with you and help to facilitate your process, it is time to start your process. In this blog I am going to discuss a variety of activities and resources that have been essential in my process, and have guided the refinement of my understanding and practice of developing, implementing and refining Overarching Learning Goals.

Second, identify your writing team. Teams can either be grade level teams for elementary teachers, and department teams, program teams, or course teams for secondary teachers. Ideally your team is somewhere between three and five people. When your team is too large it becomes much more difficult to manage the interpersonal interactions. For example the number dynamics for a group of four people the number of relationships to manage is 6, and in a group of five the number of relationships is 10, and in a group of 10, the number of relationships is 45. The number of relationships can be defined as R=[N*(N-1)]/2, where N represents the number of people in the group, and R represents the number of relationships within the group. If you are part of a larger team it is recommended that you subdivide your group into smaller cohesive units and then bring your learning together.

What do you believe is essential for students to know and do when they graduate from high school after taking courses in ______________________? (Knowledge)

Third, it is essential that as a team you vision your process and determine what you believe is most essential to student learning. During this phase, you are identifying what are your core values and beliefs of what it means to be successful as…

• a person
• a person who is able to learn
• a person who is able to learn within the academic discipline you are teaching

Note that during this stage of brainstorming, you are not concerned with curriculum or policy. You are tapping into your own thinking (that has of course been informed by your learning, your expertise as a teacher, and your experiences as a learner within the discipline) so that you can effectively determine what life long learning looks like for you and your team.

This is a brainstorming session, and requires that each member feels comfortable and the ideas that are generated by each person are valued. For this process, there are a variety of different strategies that can be used, depending on the familiarity and trust within the group. A team that is well established and already has norms of collaboration established for collaborative inquiry and professional learning may feel that a group brainstorming session is sufficient. This still requires one team member to act as a facilitator to ensure that each person’s voice his heard equally, and that all ideas are recorded. Using a mind map / concept map structure can be quite useful to document the conversation.

If the team is relatively new, it may be appropriate to allow for individualized think time. Using strategies such as think pair share to allow for individual team members to develop confidence in their thinking is highly beneficial, because as you go through the process of searching for the overarching learning goals, group conversation is going to become increasingly important. Other strategies that you could consider using include:

• have each person write down their ideas on post-it notes or cue cards and then collaboratively create the mind map, labelling common ideas and beliefs about what is essential in the learning
• use online collaborative mind mapping tools by posing a question a head of the meeting and asking team members to contribute their ideas to the shared document prior to having a discussion

What might students want to know and be able to do when they graduate from high school after taking courses in ______________________? (Prediction)

Once you have a list of what your team values, it is essential that you also think about what students want from taking your course. Ideally, it would be good to have actual student input by creating a focus group. As noted in earlier posts, students increasingly have the capacity of being autonomous in their learning because of the ability for web creation and not just web consumption. Taking their point of view and their desires into consideration is essential. Even if you decide to ask students for direct input at this stage, still take a few moments to predict what you think students might value. Then, using a compare and contrast tool, such as a Venn Diagram, compare where your thinking overlaps with student values.

Having a followup conversation about the discrepancies between your predictions and the actual student responses can help navigate issues around the disconnect between learning and schooling, and to realign school with modern learning.

Why do students need to know or be able to demonstrate these skills upon graduating from high school? (Analysis)

After looking at what you believe is important and what students desire to know, it is time to start analyzing why these skills are important in the context of life long learning. It is important to note that many students may not pursue a career in the academic discipline you are teaching. Therefore it is important, through your discussion that you take into consideration academic importance as well as life long learning skills that can be developed through the study of your subject area.

How might focusing your instruction, assessment, evaluation, reporting and communication around the knowledge and skills identified through this brainstorming help with the organization and engagement of student learning? (Synthesis)

Rank the knowledge and skills from one through five for what it means to be successful in your course. Developing OLGs is about essentialism – determining what is most important for students to know and do. During this stage it is important to engage in a gap analysis, and this allows you to start identifying areas in your program that may need work. Use the lessons, assessments and evaluations to determine where and how often students have the opportunity to demonstrate what you consider to be the most important learning by studying in your subject area or course. This will provide a sense of where you are and where you are hoping to go in terms of your pedagogical development and assessment literacy.

Identifying and naming your own values for what learning looks like in your subject area is the first step. However, although it would be nice to just teach what we feel is of value, teachers are also governed by policy and curriculum that determines what society and culture values as necessary learning to maintain the socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-economic norms of the jurisdiction of which they govern. The following posts will assist with analyzing the documents (e.g. legislation, curriculum, policy and white papers) that represent the institutional values of what is to be schooled. As an informed educator, it is absolutely necessary that we learn to contextualize our own informed judgements of educational value with those of the systems in which we work.

June 4, 2017 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Assessment, Evaluation & Instruction, Critical Thinking, Educational Reform, Professional Learning

Over Design

One of the most difficult tasks for me as a teacher is planning the curriculum for a given semester. I am conflicted by the vast quantity of “things” that my students can learn from the time that they spend with me versus what is reasonable and achievable for what can actually be accomplished.

When I sat down and planned using the backwards design model developed by Roland Case and Garfield Gini-Newman, also known as Cascading Curriculum, I became so excited with the possibilities, that I quickly realized that I was trying to cover too much. The learning narrative that I was planning allowed for a good balance of skill development, as well as acquisition of key concepts. The problem, which of course I did not realize at the time of writing is that there is just too much.

Granted having more planned than what you can get through has its benefits, but also its drawbacks. I put considerable pressure on myself to teach what I plan, as opposed to using my plans as a scaffold to say “This is the basic direction that I would like to go, and there may be things that pop up during a semester that takes more or less time for the group of students that I am currently working with.” I see this especially with the cascading curriculum around the theme of narrative that I developed for the ASM2O0 – Media Art course that I have had the luxury of teaching again.

In the near future, I will be going through a review process for the cascading curriculum, and determining how to structure and format the flow of learning to create a baseline (all students NEED to learn this in order to reach the overarching learning goals for the course) as well as areas for extension (for students who are genuinely interested in adding more tools and concepts to their repertoire of skills that they want to leave the course and  with).

In order to accomplish this differentiation though I need a tool that can provide the structure for students learning at different paces. And I believe that this is where gamification can possibly come in. I will be following up on this thought in a future post.

October 27, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking, Gamification, ReflectionsTags: education, gaming

Digital Jigsaws

I have been fascinated as of late with the power of Google Docs when implemented in an educational environment to stimulate new ways to get students thinking. A classic educational strategy has been the jigsaw, which admittedly I have not used effectively up until this point. One of my biggest sticking points with this strategy was the difficulty in getting students to genuinely share and discuss the information that they found in their content specific areas for research to bring back to a group that needs to assimilate different ideas and knowledge. Often, this ended up simply as pass the paper and mindlessly copy.

With the use of Google Docs, the facilitation and sharing of the information is much easier. Students co-construct a single document. This allows for focused conversation that can be directed with some guiding questions if students struggle to naturally investigate intersecting concepts. For example, in grade 10 visual art one of my goals for students is to understand the expressive qualities of the element of design (i.e. if you want to communicate humility, what type of line, shape / form, colour, texture, values would you use). I have organized students using a matrix such as the one below.

In this example, all students in a row are working together to understand how the elements of design communicate a particular personality trait. I create a document and duplicate by the number of groups (in this case 5). I then share the document to all members of the personality trait.

Once students have brainstormed and understood the personality trait, they are then moved to their research groups (based on the columns). Here they research a common topic to fully understand it together, and work together to make sure that they understand the nuances.

After all the research is complete, they go back to their original group (the row from the chart) and discuss and examine how the elements work to communicate the personality trait.

What I have recognized is that at this last stage, the best way for students to consolidate their learning is through a thought provoking question. When I do this lesson again, I will have students come back and respond to the following prompts:

• Write a short paragraph describing the most common qualities that are consistent between elements of design that communicate your personality trait.
• Summarize the most essential visual qualities of the elements that are used to communicate your personality trait in one sentence.
• Identify three words that most clearly articulate the qualities of the elements of design in communicating the personality traits.

 

October 19, 2016October 27, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking

The Importance of Criterion Thinking

Critical thinking is one of those educational buzz words, along with inquiry based learning, problem based learning, challenge based learning, gamification, personalized learning, flipped classrooms….. Education, like anything else, is full of fads. Ideas come and ideas go. And as I write this, I am not sure whether critical thinking will be one of these fads. What I do know however, is that after exploring many of the above mentioned, one thing that they all claim to promote is improve student outcomes. What makes teaching by critical thinking different: from the outset, the primary objective is specifically intended to assist students in developing criteria based thinking.

What is Criteria Based Thinking?

In its simplest form, it is recognizing that for students to be able to make any particular judgement, the first thing that they need is criteria. Criteria, in essence forms the foundation for any reasonable and important thinking endeavour. Once students recognize that they need to have a standard by which they are able to gather and evaluated information, then they are genuinely thinking. Criteria, in essence, makes the thinking that we ask our students to do every day, more meaningful and purposeful.

The goal though of teaching critical thinking is not to provide students with the criteria, but rather with the tools for identifying and establishing criteria. This includes simple statements such as “the painting needs to be expressive”, but also more detailed descriptions of the identified criteria (e.g. to be expressive means that there is evidence of brush stroke, choice of colour, composition, etc.).

Once students know how to identify and describe success criteria, they are then better able to gather, assess and evaluate information as it pertains to the criteria that they are using as the basis of the judgement.

Why do Students Need Criteria?

It is well known that when students know the criteria in their learning, their ability to successfully demonstrate their learning increases. The research supporting this basic understanding has been around for the past few decades, and now forms the foundation of our assessment and evaluation policies in Ontario (see Growing Success, Ministry of Education, Ontario 2010).

If we transfer this basic understanding to the domain of thinking, it becomes apparent that students need criteria to think effectively and accurately. Students need criteria to be successful thinkers. Teaching students what effective criteria looks like then becomes the foundation upon which our teaching should be built. From there, students can unlock their capacity for thinking, which will improve how they learn and what they learn in every domain.

 

September 22, 2016September 22, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking

Why are we under the impression students don’t know how to think?

Another reason that we are under the impression that students don’t know how to think, is simply because they are constantly looking for the easy answer. The easy answer typically does not require the most complex thinking; it provides a superficial exploration of an idea or topic. As educators, it is essential that we recognize that the reason for poor student engagement in thinking is not the sole responsibility of the student.

How we choose (or not) to design our curriculum is an essential aspect of whether or not our students choose to engage with what they are learning. A wide range of authors, such as Marc Prensky, Sir Ken Robinson, Garfield Gini-Newman all understand that students don’t need to learn in our classrooms. They are learning all the time. Education is no longer a means to knowledge. Knowledge is readily available. Education is a means of learning how to use knowledge in creative and innovative ways.

The next time that we see students in our classes that are is engaged, consider that it is not that the student is lazy, but rather that what they are learning has little to no real application to their daily lives. No one is going to think about something that does not genuinely matter to them. Students are no exception.

Engaging students

To engage students there are a variety of strategies. I have tried several – flipped classrooms, student choice, theme based education – but the difficulty remains the same: students need to be motivated to learn or the need to know what they don’t know in order to make meaningful decisions about what they are choosing to learn. In either case, some students do not readily engage with these formats because of the maturity and experience to be engaged in these forms of learning.

Of course, even using a thinking inspired curriculum design will not have 100% buy in by students either. There is no “magic bullet” for educators, only tools that we can identify and use for different students. However, after spending the past month really pushing students with thoughtful questions, I have seen really positive results. The students are willing to engage in significant conversations, reflect more deeply and take risks because the students recognize that they don’t all ways need the “right answer”, only a “well justified” answer. Through open ended questioning, students find that their thinking is valued. When they are feel valued they are also engaged.

September 6, 2016October 3, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking

Why are we under the impression that students don’t know how to think?

Students are thoughtful and critical by nature. As teachers though, I often hear the lament “Why don’t they think?” Teachers will often base this statement on written assessments, when we ask students to explain, reflect, summarize or justify their thinking. Secondly, the first reason simply could be that they are not interested in what you are asking them to think about. Thirdly, they may not know how to genuinely organize their thinking.

Thinking Through Writing

Not every student is effective in communicating through writing. Many students have barriers in place that prohibit deeper thinking through writing. This could be for a variety of different reasons, such as communication learning disabilities, students with fine motor control (e.g. struggles to form letters, thus slowing down the transfer of thinking to paper), but also a simple lack in understanding what they are being asked to do in their thinking.

Students are routinely asked to complete various thinking tasks such as reflecting, explaining, summarizing, or justifying. But from my experience with the students that I teach, they rarely fully understand what these terms actually mean and therefore cannot effectively develop an appropriate response. As a result, in grade 9 and 10 especially, I have found myself asking questions using these words explicitly and taking the time to consistently remind students how to think through these thinking prompts. As a result, students are beginning to document their thinking more thoroughly when they are writing.

Writing however, is still a problem for some students, and is a limited way of accessing a student’s ability to think. I have increased the amount of conferencing that I do with students as well. Yes, it can be incredibly time consuming, however, the richness of dialogue and seeing students make the connections that deepen their thinking is incredible. As students begin to talk through their thinking, responding to prompts, and seeing that they can be insightful, I have found that this then transfers to them thinking more deeply and critically on their own. With this confidence, they then begin to write more.

September 1, 2016September 29, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking

Creative & Critical Thinking

Over the past month I have been preparing for our department’s collaborative inquiry process, and delving into the nature of thinking, and have found that according to many researchers thinking falls generally into two domains – that of creative thought and and that of critical thought. The former being thinking about the production of ideas and the latter being evaluative of ideas. According to Ruggiero, there are processes in which effective thinkers engage in order to develop the capacity of thinking in both domains, and that these processes are learned.

As an Visual Art & Media Art educator in Ontario, I am keenly aware that these processes are an integral part of The Arts Curriculum (revised 2010), as we are very much interested in students ‘production’ and ‘thinking’. By reading this text, I am seeing the creative process in a new way, not as the steps required to produce something, but rather as the steps necessary to think through the production of something. This is a new insight to me. The creative process in particular is not a list of things for students to do, but rather a guide for students to think through their production. The emphasis is on the thinking.

A concern for me however is that this may once again make The Arts Curriculum even more cerebral.  I firmly believe that it is essential that students have the technical vocabulary and skills to create their work – the essentials in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, mixed media, lens based works, digital works, etc. Taking the curriculum out of the hands of the student and entrenching it even more so in their heads so that it becomes increasing difficult for the majority of students to be able to visual communicate their thinking effectively.

Perhaps something that the arts need to work on is the ‘art of thinking’ as a part of the program and the ‘art of making’ and as students work through the curriculum they understand how the two go and in hand. But the structure of the curriculum would need to change in order for that to happen effectively, so as to really meet the expectations that are currently set out in the curricular documents.

At the end of The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical & Creative Thought Ruggiero discusses the presentation of one’s thinking, and the ability to communicate. In chapter 14 he discusses that one, albeit very important aim, of communicating one’s thinking about problems and issues is that often you need to persuade others to your way of thinking or solution. This is based on the understanding that you need to know the issue or problem inside and out, and you can see it from multiple vantage points. Where Ruggiero lacks is is assumption that there are two primary ways in which to persuade – through writing or through speech. In the twelfth edition of this book, Ruggiero needs to address ideas about visual communication and embodied communication that are such a significant part of dialogue in the 21st century.

 

February 21, 2015September 29, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking

Thinking Through Problems & Issues

One of the most important insights that I had while reading The Art of Thinking by Vincent Ryan Ruggerio is the difference of problems and issues. Ruggerio defines the difference as

A problem is a situation that we regard as unacceptable; an issue is a matter about which intelligent, informed people disagree to some extent. (p.116).

This separation provides clear delineation of the type of work that we are typically asking students to do in an Arts based classroom. For the most part, our creativity is either entirely self reflective (e.g. getting to know who you are as an individual) or an exploration of established disciplinary concepts (e.g. the gaze) or an exploration of a world issue.

Truth is, I would argue that in reality, the depth of the thinking that students engage is shallow for the most part because the questions that we are asking do not require students to delve deeply into the issue that we are presenting.

First Nations, Métis, Inuit Education protest on Parliament Hill, Ottawa (image from cbc.ca)

The issue is best expressed using questions such as:

Ask questions such as:

• Is education a right or a privilege?
• Does the government have a responsibility to support the education of First Nation, Métis and Inuit children?
• Should non-First Nation’s, Métis or Inuit people support the education of children on reserves?

These questions I have developed in consultation with Ruggerio’s strategies for expressing issues. These questions are going to serve as the foundation for a grade 12 inquiry into the idea of educational rights.

In my art education teaching, I think also that there is a tendency towards dealing with issues, and not problems. Problems are a much gander scale and require a different kind of thinking because they are about developing solutions – either through policy, making of something, etc. Much of my teaching of the creative process is about problem solving – i.e. how can you best represent your ideas in a visual form? Therefore, when I have thought that I was presenting problems, I was really presenting issues, obscured by the problem of visual representation. As a result the direction and depth of student thinking has been skewed / misinformed.

Going back to the exemplar questions that I am providing for my grade 12 media arts students, I am needing to push the questioning to problems over the course of the semester because a primary goal is that their work provides action. Such questions would be (note the stem… How can…?):

• How can the students raise awareness of the rights of education for all children, especially those of First Nation, Métis and Inuit identity amongst their peers?
• How can students raise funds and / or resources to create a more level playing field for First Nation, Métis and Inuit learners?
• How can students affect social and political change in terms of policy and funding by governments?
• How can students lobby corporations to donate / make affordable essential learning tools to distant and remote reserves?

From the list of questions above, I am able to see a variety of different types of problems:

• there is a lack of awareness of the educational environment of First Nation, Métis and Inuit
• there is a funding gap for First Nation, Métis and Inuit
• there is little economic incentive to build infrastructure in remote locations across the province

Although there may not always be a direct correlation between issues and problems, I am beginning to think that there may be a stronger correlation between the two. As often, it may be the case that the issue that divides people also creates deficits for people and raises social, environmental, political and cultural problems.

 

February 17, 2015September 29, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking

The Art of Thinking

As part of the professional development of my team this year, we are engaging in a new professional learning process called Collaborative Inquiry. With the assistance of our instructional coach, our goal is to see how we can better intersect the phases of the creative and critical analysis process through the act of questioning.

In order to prepare us for this task, I have read Vincent Ryan Ruggiero’s book The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thought (11th edition). Though this book was not exactly what I expected, it does provide some excellent insight into how we go about organizing our inquiry with students and how to develop questions to help foster the critical and creative thinking that we all value so much.

This blog entry is a summary of the text, as preparation for our initial dialogues as a departmental team investigating the creative and critical analysis processes in the context of creating artworks, music, dance, and dramatic performances.

Ruggiero begins the book by setting the context for what thinking is. It is essential to remember that there is a difference between disengaged thinking v. passive thinking v. active thinking. The latter is the most preferred, but also requires the most work to cultivate and refine. In this active state, thinking is not just a verbal phenomenon – it can take various forms, including (but not limited to) sketching and improvising with sound and / or body. In understanding that the form of thinking does not hinder the quality of the thinking, Ruggiero then moves to unpacking the phases of active thinking: idea production (creation) and idea judgement (analysis). The quality of one’s thinking in either of these domains is a matter of habit, and it can be inferred that the quality of one’s thinking is determined by the ability and habit of fluidly moving between each of these two domains.

To be come a better thinker requires one to establish positive habits of thinking. Such habits include:

• practice your thinking (identify and engage in deep thinking regularly)
• know how you think and how to refine how you think
• know where you think best
• know when you think best
• know how to concentrate

“To concentrate means to return our attention to our purpose or problem whenever it wanders.” (p. 11)

Once you have your habits of thinking established, it is important to ensure that you are effectively using a variety of strategies to help you with creative and critical challenges. To do this, consider the following:

• re-read for understanding
• don’t trap yourself in a dead end
• correctly identify the facts
• clarify confusion
• identify multiple possible solutions
• use if / then statements
• re-read for different purposes / perspectives
• avoid oversimplification
• examine your first impressions
• describe what you need to think about
• broaden your context

“If you don’t understand both (or all) sides of an issue, you don’t understand the issue.” (p. 42)

One of the most important things to remember is that when you are working through the process of thinking in a critical context, you need to be aware of whether or not you are using your critical thinking in the context of evaluating via taste (emotion / personal preference) or via judgement (reason & relative objectivity). In either case, as our students are learning how to think, and become effective creative and critical thinkers, it is necessary for them to discern the idea from the person who has the idea. Developing this degree of separation will assist in being able to create and assess ideas more effectively.

Through this process, we can assess our overall effectiveness if we can see that our students become:

• more dynamic / more curious
• more daring / risk taking
• more resourceful
• more hardworking
• more independent
  

 

 

February 12, 2015September 29, 2016 by Brian Leichnitz Categories: Critical Thinking