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 Audronė Allan on -
Kathy Myers said: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.
Dear Kathy,
I like challenges. I would like to add new perspective on the challenge you raise.
What about a challenge: To arrange a Latteral Move from well ingrained pattern of multiple-choice testing within educational systems and explore other testing possibilities?
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Permalink Reply by Audronė Allan on
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My experience in promotion dBT within Lithuanian educational system, working with schools, teachers, students, curriculum designers and educational researchers helped to observe four factors that are important for successful integration “Design Thinking” into school or university curriculum:
Factor #1: Agreement on the new purpose of education in new times is necessary for meaning generation: why we should teach ‘Design Thinking’?
Factor #2: Ability to make an operationalization of the abstract concept of ‘Design Thinking’ down to measurable learning outcomes and levels of achievement;
Factor #3: Availability of methods helping to integrate teaching thinking into everyday teaching/learning activities in both contexts: thinking classes or any subject area;
Factor #4: Availability of assessment and evaluation strategies, techniques and tools that could help to monitor and assess progress in developing ‘Design Thinking’ and make it formal teaching/learning practice.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on -
You're a Genie's Arse (Aussie for 'Genius')
I'll go over this later and get back to you - looks great
It's 43 centigrade in Melbourne today - Sydney cops 31. Ain't goin near the surf!
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim on -
I think that the problem is two-folded: first, when certain thinking skills are missed or ignored for conscious or unconscious reasons; second, when all the thinking skills are there but they function is the wrong order. Analysis of information and judgment has cost the world a fortune. A clear example is what happened in Iraq following analysis of the CIA information and the black and white decision taken by the former USA president. The whole world needs to learn thinking skills, especially perceptual, exploratory, realistic, lateral, creative, design, value and operational thinking and try to integrate them with the excellent but handicapped thinking that we have inherited since the time of Greek philosophers I mean the logical, analytical and judgmental thinking modes. I think that not only design thinking needs to be added to university and school curricula, but all the de Bono thinking skills.
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Permalink Reply by Audronė Allan on
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Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim said:I think that the problem is two-folded: first, when certain thinking skills are missed or ignored for conscious or unconscious reasons; second, when all the thinking skills are there but they function is the wrong order. Analysis of information and judgment has cost the world a fortune. A clear example is what happened in Iraq following analysis of the CIA information and the black and white decision taken by the former USA president. The whole world needs to learn thinking skills, especially perceptual, exploratory, realistic, lateral, creative, design, value and operational thinking and try to integrate them with the excellent but handicapped thinking that we have inherited since the time of Greek philosophers I mean the logical, analytical and judgmental thinking modes. I think that not only design thinking needs to be added to university and school curricula, but all the de Bono thinking skills.
I fully agree with Dr. Yehia A. Ibrahim’s suggestion to integrate dBT thinking into school and university curriculum.
I have experience integrating dBT into university curriculum. I have reached some results with students, but never recorded any visible impact on the ethos of academic thinking. Academic thinking is something of anti-dBT sort. Some personalities take dBT idea, but all organization doesn’t move. Short projects are possible, but these to not convert into sustainable process of cultural change at university.
I think that integration into school curriculum is the first priority. Universities could go further in elaboration and application of thinking skills. But universities go behind schools in Lithuania with teaching thinking.
It would be interesting to hear some success stories from the university sector.
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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on
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Christ, it looks seriously cold in Lithuania Mr Bear! Having said that, I would swap Sydney's stifling heat any day for a beautiful wintry scene like that. We are dodging bushfires and floods at this time - but I guess we can't complain; only Haitians have the right to complain about their lot in life at this time...
The DBT scope and sequence document is the first of its kind I have seen. Integrating DBT into the NZ National Curriculum will be a grand milestone here in the Antipodes. It must make you spew to see that the critical competency they are stipulating is (of course) critical thinking, but to have even arrived at the point where something totally voodoo like thinking is at last being taken seriously by educators deserves a standing ovation.
Apart from sweet Susan Mackie in Melbourne, I am unaware of any serious de Boners here in NSW (other than yours truly) and have reached a level of despair over this. Ted himself made a bit of a push in Queensland in the late 80s/early 90s and got a few schools doing the Hats and CoRT (around the time he wanted to be King of Oz), but this all seems abated now. Sydney edu-Nazis always seems content to go the Art Costa, Rob Marzano, Tony Buzan, Howard Gardner circus and - worst of all - rip a page or two out of each manual of these spin-off authors to create a Frankenstein's Monster "framework" of bleeding and unintegrated chunks. A typical "teaching and learning framework" document is typically in excess of 90 pages long and the staff at schools that have been saddled with these things groan about the extra work and prep this responsibility brings. Many staff simply ignore the requirements of the framework and teach as before: "I've been a schoolteacher for 31 years; how dare they suggest I've got something new to learn about teaching."
Graeme, you have certainly showed how DBT can find its place in the curriculum - in particular, the assessment process looks immaculate enough to make any Dean of Studies raise an eyebrow in admiration.
Australians are still too smugly complacent to realise they are just going through the motions and not really doing anything at all. There simply isn't the willpower to do anything substantial. I know you are at variance with this view, but then you would be one of the few who have the right to disagree, given what you have achieved. In addition, it will be a day in Hell like the one in your photograph when Aussies look over the "ditch" for examples of best-practice teaching in NZ.
New South Wales is now an economic cot-case. We are the worst-performing economy in the country. The government is flailing about badly with transport crises, hospital crises, drought crises, unemployment etc. and we are now being told that the fallout from the Global Financial Crisis hasn't even struck here yet!
We need New Thinking in this backwater as never before! Come to Sydney and turn this place around. I'm still going over the OurTown project sheet which looks fabulous.
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