Curiosity, Rigour and Learning As You Go

A very interesting documentary by Andrew Zuckerman reflecting on the process of making rather than just the outcome. However, the actual video interviews/outcomes look very interesting. Here is the synopsis:

"Photographer and filmmaker Andrew Zuckerman shares the lessons learned from his iconic WISDOM project, in which he interviewed "elders" around the world, including Chuck Close, Bill Withers, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Massimo Vignelli, and many more. Zuckerman talks about the anxiety we feel as we start a new projects, how fear can help us get things done, and the importance of honesty and good, old-fashioned hard work."

A Winter's Tale

As part of the Transition Days programme in July 2011, the English Department organised a participatory drama workshop based on Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale'. Having observed some of the sessions, there was a fantastic energy with teachers and students all enthused by taking a different approach to exploring Shakespeare. Mr Kenny pillaged the Art Department to set up his picture gallery treasure hunt trail, whilst Ms Cunningham (always keen to kick off her shoes and do a bit of Irish dancing) arranged a dance/theatrical workshop int the style of a Western.

There should be more opportunities for taking a multi-disciplinary approach through cross-curricular planning and team teaching as the results are often fun and break up the monotony of always delivering the same content through the same methods.

Ms Doogan summarises the workshops in the following extract:

Workshop 1 involved students working out the narrative, characters and themes. This was set up as a puzzle in which 5 rooms represented the 5 different Acts of the play. In each room were a series of clues which students had to solve in order to understand what happened in that section of the play. Students will rotate from room to room every 10 minutes – this will be signalled by a buzzer in the corridor. For more details please see attached document, all of which I must emphasise was created by Mark.

Workshop 2 is a performance. The 5 class groups will perform one of the 5 Acts of the play. They will be given a brief summary of what happens in their Act and some key quotations to include in their performance. They will need to improvise the rest of their dialogue. The second half of the lesson will involve the best group performers being watched by the rest of the year group. The best performers stay in the room with you while the students rotate to the next room and watch the different acts being performed.

Below are some photos and a video from the session:

PISA - Measuring student success

The lastest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) ranking, showed that the UK is fairly average in its scores (although ranked 11th in Science) throughout the 34 participating countries and has been stagnant for the past few years. This animation gives an interesting overview of the assessment process behind the PISA rankings are made and it is important to understand the impact that these have on how government's shape educational policy. PISA looks at the correlation between what is learnt at school and then applied in contexts outside of school. The following statement is made in the PISA 2009 Assessment Framework:

PISA 2009 covers the domains of reading, mathematics and science not merely in terms of

whether students can reproduce specific subject matter knowledge, but also whether they can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply their knowledge in novel situations

There is no mention of creativity, possibly because it is difficult to quantify and compare easily, but I can't help thinking that it needs to be more explicit in the types of intelligences it aims to measure, especially since it is focused on very traditional academic concepts of intelligence with respects to reading, maths and science. It would be interesting to know how they might measure according to Gardner's Multiple Intelligences:

Guildford's Structure of the Intellect

Joy Guildford was a psychologist that started to examine the creative process in more depth in the 1950s since he felt that our understanding of creativity was limited to the assumption that it was a result of intelligence, traditionally measured by IQ. The following extract was taken from a summary worksheet produced by the Co-Creativity Institute in Illinois:

'Guildford sought to develop tests for each combination of the possibilities on these three dimensions, expecting that a person could be high on some of these abilities while being low on others.  In The nature of human intelligence (1967) and Way beyond the IQ (1977), he lays out the results of his efforts and the modified model which evolved from his research.' - Christopher Barlow, The Co-Creativity Institute, 2000

You can read about these dimensions and how they link to creative thinking by downloading the following pdf document or by clicking on the images below:

(R)evolution in the classroom

Check out this inspiring video by a group of American students demanding changes in the way they are taught! The revolution starts here ...