Design in the curriculum!
Schools are all about knowledge and analysis. So are universities. Most human thinking is based on analysis which allows us to identify standard situations and then we can apply the standard behaviour or solution. This is like a doctor in a clinic diagnosing the disease and then prescribing the standard treatment.
This behaviour is excellent and most useful. But it is ebne. Design is equally important. Yet design does not figure on the curriculum in schools and universities.
I used to run a design competition in an education magazine. There was a very good response even from youngsters as young as four years old.
This behaviour is excellent and most useful. But it is ebne. Design is equally important. Yet design does not figure on the curriculum in schools and universities.
I used to run a design competition in an education magazine. There was a very good response even from youngsters as young as four years old.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Leon van den Berg on -
So much so, Rees, that I believe schools should be made at least one of the Houses of Parliament. Homework should always deal creatively with real problems and challenges of the day. Resulting ideas, also of those in the other Houses, should ultimately be treated by means of the Six Thinking Hats, the Six Action Shoes and the Six Value Medals. Legislation must then reflect the outcomes.
Rees Homer said:Yes. Once four-year-olds can get their tongues around the word curriculum, am sure that if they were properly consulted, that many new ideas could come from these four-year-olds, even to help in designing a new curriculum/class schedule. Perhaps unbeknownst to us some four-year-olds have posted designs for curricula on the internet!
Four years old may sound young but when you are four years old it's quite normal! And normal to have ideas.
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Permalink Reply by Franis on -
Edward, can you write a little more about what practical curriculum design is?
Does that include how a subject might be taught as well as the selection of what subjects are taught?
Can you give us a hint of the results from your design competition that you thought were useful or fascinating examples?
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Permalink Reply by Franis on
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Thanks, Rees. That's a good answer for the first question.
Without an education in art you wouldn't know, but there do exist specifics of visual design about why artwork appears artistically pleasing. Of course, doing a high volume of whatever happens and then selecting the "artistic" paintings after the fact is also a possible strategy. However, just like using thinking in the practical world, art works best if you do an AGO (Aims Goals Objectives) for success, think & ask questions, experiment and then clearly evaluate how the results fit or might be shaped to match that AGO in future attempts. If you'd like to learn about the analysis of what makes "good" art, my favorite book to learn this from pokes fun at artists, galleries and the art world, an older book called "Why Cats Paint" by Busch & Silver.
If I were give carte blanch to design school curriculum, I'd build more fun into learning. How groups can work together to make things happen would not only be learned from sports, but in project-based learning expressed in building stuff. This could happen starting with puzzle & art projects, continuing toward greater mechanical complexity. Kids could bring junk to school and learn how it works by taking it apart and putting it back together. Rather than subjects, classes would focus more around activity-based learning involving kids' specific interests. Class time would show the practical application of actually, designing, doing and making stuff - as shop-type classes used to be taught in the sixties, as well as how to find out how to do it. Foreign languages belong in preschool and kindergarten and world travel. Music and mathematics would be studied together, because one compliments the other. As well as thinking skills, important would be classes in non-violent communication, dispute resolution & negotiation. I'd pair teens with adult mentors and older classmates... Any adult could easily get paid to teach kids what they know. (Of course, because of calcification of the current educational system, the only way any of these ideas could really happen would be by home-schooling, which I did for a step-child of mine.)
I'm still hoping Edward will answer my last question about the results of his design competition.
Rees Homer said:
PS
It's very important to distinguish between splashing paint around randomly on a canvas and having specific ideas created for a purpose systematically, creating design and a sense of achievement in design thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Franis on
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Rees Homer said:
Thanks Rees for the compliment. Yes, I have thought of doing this quite often. I even have made the time in my life so I could do such a thing. Are you sure that you're not Edward de Bono himself masquerading as a different user name?Franis
Having looked at your many enlightened posts over some months, have you ever thought of adding the Teaching of Thinking to your repertoire of skills :) By the sound of it, you partly do that anyway through Alexander etc. but being properly trained in the de Bono techniques in a formal setting to become a Trainer, would set you up on a higher plateau. I may speak from experience here. Just a thought, and then you would meet Edward whether you win the competition or not! :)
A lack of money has mostly been the limiting issue for me in carrying out this suggestion. The way I have always been able to indulge my interests with further education is to get to know the knowledgeable person directly. As I learned first-hand what it was they needed, I could propose they take advantage of what I could do for them or their sense of purpose in their work. Eventually the teacher would offer me a scholarship in recognition for what I had already done for them, or an apprenticeship relationship involving what I proposed to do for them.
So far I have only met one person in my life who had read and taken to heart de Bono's ideas before I joined this forum. I did manage to purchase correspondence courses from de Bono; the Oxford Course in Thinking and the Masterthinker course.
Coupled with my many other skills, talents and ability to learn fast, my preference for learning through relationships have been successful. In my first year of college I was tutored by professor Dun Fong Lee in Chinese to replace curriculum course material I already knew. He offered to sponsor me to move to Taiwan, teach English & continue learning Chinese from him. (Unfortunately I've forgotten the contents of the four week private study course in which I learned about 75 characters a week; at the time I had to decline his offer to make use of a full scholarship for art college. After college when I tried to contact him, he had died.) I have previously been trained to teach Alexander Technique in a ten year trade in exchange for writing about her approach with Marj Barstow, (she was the first graduate of the first training course taught by the founder. I'm still writing, though Marj died in 1998.) A few years ago I was the recipient of a course in teaching music education by apprenticeship to Mr. Natural in San Francisco, CA. (who is still alive.) Recently I've traded book interviews and other work for books and course material with authors Gregg Fraley and Barbara Sher, (who are also happily still very much alive.)
If I could perform some service for Dr. Edward de Bono to further his personal interests, the interests of this website or of his work, I'd be most happy to trade the many skills I have for being certified to teach his thinking style. I'm also aware that these offers are rarely extended to someone without knowing them first personally.
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As far as the topic here goes, I have since ran into one idea from the design competition in a video of Edward. He noted the work of a four year old who rose to the occasion of designing a dog-walking machine with a very different approach to all of the other entrants. He designed a shocking machine that penalized the dog when it stopped! Let's hope the kid didn't get this idea from how his parents trained him.
This reminded me of an actual study where the experimenters administered a shock to cats by watching them carefully and pressing a button to administer the shock when the cats took a bite of food. The cats, (who had faster reactions than their human tormentors,) learned to take a bite of food and then jump in the air off the metal plate so they missed the momentary electric shock. Once trained in this manner, the poor cats continued to jump during each bite of their meals ever after that. It's interesting to speculate what a dog would do who had been shocked for standing still.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Tennant on -
hello all,
I've been teaching for a couple of years now (after a career in industry) and am particularly interested in formally integrating design into the course that I run ("Business and Environment" at Imperial College London). As part of that course I have 20 master's-level students working on new concepts for business models that embody positive environmental and social value. "Design thinking" is crucial to a successful outcome, where new concepts to old models have to be developed.
My biggest problem is how best to design an assessment scheme that meets the requirements of the college and also rewards the design process appropriately. I can always fall back on the standard: "is your cash flow statement right?"; "is your marketing strategy supported and justified?". However, these don't assess what is essentially a future-looking, subjectively normative activity.
I'd love to hear any experiences that other people have had with this, and any ideas for a resolution to the dilemma!
Mike
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Permalink Reply by Kathy Myers on -
Rees Homer said:Franis
Having looked at your many enlightened posts over some months, have you ever thought of adding the Teaching of Thinking to your repertoire of skills :) By the sound of it, you partly do that anyway through Alexander etc. but being properly trained in the de Bono techniques in a formal setting to become a Trainer, would set you up on a higher plateau. i may speak from experience here. Just a thought, and then you would meet Edward whether you win the competition or not! :)
I agree with Reese-Franis you are very thoughtful but I often get lost looking for the connections between your observations and Edward's work. It is probably my trouble dealing with abstract concepts, I think I'm learning disabled in this area!
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Permalink Reply by Kathy Myers on
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I first became aware of Edward’s work in the early 70s when it fell to me to design a high school course in Creative Writing. I wondered whether I could teach students to be more creative, or if the job was to recruit creative students and teach them how to express themselves in writing. I came across Edward’s Lateral Thinking for Management in the town library and found my answers.
Later as editor in chief for a company that published products for students and teachers, I met with Edward in person and we published two of his courses: Think Note Write (a graphic interpretation of some of the CoRT tools) and Six Thinking Hats for Schools. Cut to the chase—we found at least two challenges in selling these materials:
1. There is no budget money for teaching thinking in U.S. schools. The big money lies in Reading/Language Arts, Science, and Math. Our customers were often teachers who had been assigned Special Education, including the education of gifted children. The only district adoptions we achieved were in Florida and guess where they got the money. From special government funds to rebuild after hurricane Andrew!
2. Standardized tests do not test design thinking. U.S. teachers and schools are evaluated based on the standardized test scores achieved by their students. Thus they teach to the tests.
Here’s a challenge: Create multiple-choice questions that test design thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Phil Bachmann on -
Hello Kathy,
I find your take on this to be very informative. Regarding your challenge:
Create multiple-choice questions that test design thinking.
…it would be great if this were possible and maybe to an extent it is, but I am reminded of a conversation I had with the Principal of a small Christian school in our district in which I asked him “How have been surprised by your students’ work?”
He looked shocked and almost horrified as he said, “Surprised??!!”. It’s as if ‘surprised’ by students’ imagination was the last thing he wanted to be.
Design thinking is specifically about producing surprising (and well-fitting) outcomes, which kinda precludes multiple-choice questions (which presume to know the answer).
Nevertheless, I will produce a video soon explaining how the simplicity and surety of multiple-choice questions could be used to ensure that youngsters at least know some of the steps involved in design thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Kathy Myers on
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I can sympathize with the teacher who wanted to avoid surprise...when I taught creative writing I had 60 students writing every day (along with another 60 in 2 sections of another course I was teaching). You have 60 people write for 10 minutes a day and it produces 60 paragraphs or more to read and respond to, if you want to maintain a sense of what they are thinking about and how they are expressing themselves--and whether or not they are improving based on the course lessons. I never resorted to multiple-choice tests, but then again, I only lasted about 10 years in the classroom. It will be intriguing to see what you come up with, Phil.
Phil Bachmann said:Hello Kathy,
I find your take on this to be very informative. Regarding your challenge:
Create multiple-choice questions that test design thinking.
…it would be great if this were possible and maybe to an extent it is, but I am reminded of a conversation I had with the Principal of a small Christian school in our district in which I asked him “How have been surprised by your students’ work?”
He looked shocked and almost horrified as he said, “Surprised??!!”. It’s as if ‘surprised’ by students’ imagination was the last thing he wanted to be.
Design thinking is specifically about producing surprising (and well-fitting) outcomes, which kinda precludes multiple-choice questions (which presume to know the answer).
Nevertheless, I will produce a video soon explaining how the simplicity and surety of multiple-choice questions could be used to ensure that youngsters at least know some of the steps involved in design thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Phil Bachmann on
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Rees,
I've just had another look at the chapter from "Teaching Thinking" called "Tests and Testing". It seems mostly concerned with the pitfalls of testing.
The video should be out sometime next week.
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Permalink Reply by Phil Bachmann on
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Hello Kathy,
My sense was that that teacher did not ever want to be surprised by what his students wanted to say. Certainly that was what I got from the expression of discomfort on his face and the big grin on the face of his son-and-former-student, standing nearby.
Rees came up with a couple of excellent POs a couple of months ago on this site that seemed to address your situation of 60 people writing for 10 minutes...
po students test the teachers
po students test themselves
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Permalink Reply by William Jack Jordan on -
When I read this I googled 'ebne' as I had forgotten what it meant.
(Excellent but not enough)
I found a site in which Ed says
"I would welcome suggestions on how to show people that our traditional thinking is not as complete as we believe it to be."
A broad approach that comes to mind is to use historical anecdotes.
If examples of contemporary practices or thinking then is a good possibility that the mind of the reader/listener will tend to jump in and defend the practice. This may be unintentional, but will lessen the ability of the reader to absorb the idea.
To avoid the tendency of the mind to defend the status quo, historical anecdotes could be used to give examples of where the traditional thinking was believed to be complete, but the average person can clearly see that with the advantage of hindsight and new knowledge.
Anyway historical anecdotes can be fun.
Steps could be shown to compare what this thinking has in common with a contemporary example.
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