I just started iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind and already found something of value to my discussion about how schools can develop innovative thinking skills, particularly in relation to the use of arts learning experiences.
In discussing brain development in young children, Dr. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan state that if young children are deprived of proper environmental stimulation and human contact, "neuronal firing and brain cellular connections do not form correctly." They state that children's visual brain regions are susceptible to visual deprivation up to age 8.
In other words, surrounding children with color and form, providing them with regular visual arts experiences, and using visual images in teaching seem to be almost as critical to brain development as providing proper nutrition.
"But if the specialist is ignorant of the inner philosophy of the science he cultivates, he is much more radically ignorant of the historical conditions requisite for its continuation; that is to say: how society and the heart of man are to be organized in order that there may continue to be investigators."
– Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
Last week's Quote of the Week was intriguing to me. Are those who are leading the call thinking for innovative thinkers considering the unintended consequences that always come with innovation? Artists always seem to be tapped in to the zeitgeist surrounding progress. Could the study of aesthetics help students grapple more effectively with some of the societal questions that will need to be asked as breakthroughs occur.
In their book Breakthrough: Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation, Mark Stefik and Barbara Stefik describe innovation as a "dance of two questions." Those questions are "What is possible?" and "What is needed?" They discuss four main approaches that drive how scientists and inventors arrive at breakthroughs:
1) Theory-Driven: A mental model or theory provides a way of thinking that leads to insight and invention. Tagline: "Eureka!"
2) Data-Driven: An anomaly in data presents a surprising possibility. Tagline: "That's strange."
3) Method-Driven: Instrumentation enables previously unknown observations, discoveries, and inventions. Tagline: "Now I can see it!"
4) Need-Driven: Learning about an unresolved need or problem in the world leads to a search for a way to satisfy or solve it. Tagline: "Necessity is the mother of invention."
"These approaches," say the authors, "are like colors on a palette in that they can be mixed to form variations and combinations."
I was thinking about my earlier posts that explored what industry leaders mean when they talk about creativity and innovation as 21st century skills. I think it would be valuable for science, mathematics, and technology teachers to refer to these four approaches as they design curriculum and instruction geared to the preparation of future STEM majors and workers.
Of course my questions are: Do these four approaches apply to the arts? Is it possible that artistic invention—learning and making sense of the world through the practice of art—would add to the development of the skills and traits that prepare students to master those four approaches in a STEM context? Does the creative process that occurs before an artist begins to create a product (and by "product" I mean anything from a sculpture or musical composition to a dance or dramatic interpretation of a character) and the kinds of decisions an artist makes as a work takes shape consist of very similar ways of perceiving, thinking, and imagining? Does criticism in the arts translate to critical thinking in the STEM disciplines?
I do not claim that spending all day working on art projects or practicing an instrument will prepare you to discover a new star or invent the next generation of computer. Students need knowledge and skill in math and science as well. But I also don't think those skills are sufficient. Here is my first attempt to relate the arts to these four approaches to invention:
Theory-Driven: A quest for "the beautiful" is one thing arts and sciences have in common. Scientists and mathematicians often use the terms "beautiful" and "elegant" when discussing equations and solutions, says philosopher Robert Grudin in his far-ranging exploration of creativity and innovation (The Grace of Great Things). "Art itself can be a form of hypothesis, the detailed elaboration and testing of an idea," he says.
Data-Driven: Might training in the visual arts be a way to develop better powers of observation and a sensitivity to patterns? Could music instruction help students become more attuned to changes in their environment?
Method-Driven: Could the intense discipline required to practice an art form skillfully be related to the focus needed in STEM disciplines?
Need-Driven: Industrial design, a rapidly growing career area, often begins with a need. Often, artists are part of the team, not only because they provide an aesthetic perspective, but also because of their ability to see problems in different ways.
Brain-based learning research identifies four essential elements of learning – emotion, movement, context, and environment. What comes to mind first when you read each of those elements? Name five classroom experiences that epitomize the elements at their most positive. Chances are, the arts figure greatly in your ideas.
On a related note:
In an online article from Educational Leadership (Summer 2007, Volume 64 Engaging the Whole Child), neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis says that "when we scrub joy and comfort from the classroom, we distance our students from effective information processing and long-term memory storage." She uses the acronym RAD to summarize three important neuroscience concepts to consider when preparing lessons:
Novelty promotes information transmission through the Reticular activating system.
Stress-free classrooms propel data through the Amygdala's affective filter.
Pleasurable associations linked with learning are more likely to release more Dopamine.
If only for the infusion of play, laughter, and freedom from the need to find one right answer, the arts should be an everyday experience for all students.
The future of technology is one big reason schools need to foster creative, innovative thinking. And I say this aside from earlier posts about American industries' need to stay competitive by developing new technologies. Yes, technological advances are our best hope for achieving global economic leadership.
But I am following another line of thought. I am thinking about how many jobs are being eliminated or streamlined because technology does it better, faster, and cheaper. For example, when I worked at NASA I once did a half-hour interview with a computer. No, it was not some machine with advanced artificial intelligence. It was a woman aged sixty-something, whose first job in the 1940s was to sit all day at a desk and repetitiously perform arithmetic functions based on data from test facilities. Her job title was "computer," and there was a whole cadre of them. In a way, she was the Rosie the Riveter of knowledge work. She and some managers from the same era told me about punching cards and trekking from building to building to pick up and deliver the cards. In my time at NASA (1987-1996), I saw the labor-intensive part of scientific computing shrink rapidly and many tasks that required a specialist become routine. In fact, there were only a few people who could create presentations in Freelance (a precursor to Powerpoint) and we had a whole department for training secretaries to use management information systems that today they would figure out in a couple of sessions on their own. People who could write code were well-paid and in-demand. Now that skill is not enough. Many skilled jobs in computing have become much less time-intensive because software has been integrated and made easier to use.
Or consider this: Ohio is still one of the top manufacturing centers in the United States, but it has lost nearly 250,000 manufacturing jobs in recent years because of automation.
Then there are all the jobs that have become (or can become) almost completely automated—answering phones and routing calls, checking out groceries, many aspects of banking, booking flights for travelers. These jobs are much less plentiful.
So while high tech jobs in America today are plentiful and pay well, there has been erosion at the bottom of the high-tech pay scale. A new computer software company or engineering firm in a depressed area will not create significant jobs for people without technical training or college degrees.
Frank Levy and Richard Murnane call this a "new division of labor." In their 2004 book of that title, they predict that jobs consisting of following defined rules and performing repetitive activities are not the key to middle class wages.
I would probably venture that children need some experiences with structure and rules. Following directions, consistency, and efficiency will always be needed. But being good at using rules and following directions are not ends in themselves. Increasingly, rule-based tasks will be valuable only as a way to support creative, innovative work.
"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."
- Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 11, 1964.
This quote expresses what many are feeling today after the election of Barack Obama. So often that "inaudible language" begins in the heart but finds expression in works of art. That is why we must work to give all children that precious form of expression.
Lois Feibus, a preschool educator at the Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School, made an interesting point on her Academy for Early Learning blog:
. . . after almost thirty years of teaching Preschool, the most creative children that I have known, have been those who have not been forced to perform academically, but who were allowed to explore the outdoors, whose creativity was allowed to flourish, and who had ample opportunities to be little kids, at home and at school. Academic success and higher level thinking, for both children, in the end, were where the developmental process took them.
This empirical observation rings true to anyone who has observed children outdoors. I still remember investigating every inch of my yard. I can remember what every flower looked like and smelled like, how its seeds looked, how the soil behaved. We used to go outside with no toys of any kind and never be bored. I also had this little memory of my son Mike at age 4 (Thanks Lois.) We had been planting vegetables and he insisted that he was goingto plant a "meat garden." Of course we told him that was not possible, and he argued that he had seen one. Not long after, we passed a marshy area, where he triumphantly showed me the cattails (a.k.a. hot dogs) growing there. Mike was a very creative kid artistically and mechanically, as well as being what I think is a prime example of Gardner's "Naturalist" intelligence. Today, he is a machinist who is responsible for an entire manufacturing set up and uses his ability to visualize and invent in some very practical ways.
I think nature is very important to the development of innovative thinking and have just remembered "No Child Left Indoors." I googled this phrase just now after remembering an article I read this summer and found that this title is now being used by several states passing legislation, as well as programs and initiatives by schools, communities, and environmental groups across the country. These programs and Richard Louv's 2005 book Last Child in the Woods -- Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, as well as Bill McKibben's The End of Nature (1990, 2006), should definitely be part of my discussion on how to develop creative, innovative thinkers.
I am going to shift gears today. The last few posts about what business might mean when citing creativity and innovation as 21st century skills are certainly not definitive, but they will be my framework for researching more about the business/economic perspective in the innovation conversation.
I plan to begin exploring three additional threads on fostering innovative thinking (which includes creativity):
1) Fostering Innovative Thinking: What Does It Mean? In addition to defining creativity and innovation from the perspective of various business sectors, what other perspectives on creativity and innovation are important and need to be heard as we discuss those two 21st century skills? I will explore what governors and legislators, opinion leaders in education, creative people in the arts and a wide variety of other realms, researchers, and parents and citizens who have not been part of the conversation are saying and doing around the issue of creativity and innovation as 21st century schools.
2) Fostering Innovative Thinking: Why Do We Do It? I will look critically at the claim that schools need to develop creative, innovative thinkers, as well as at the rationales of others. I also will question my own assertion that learning in the arts is an essential component of developing creative, innovative thinking and other 21st century skills.
3) Fostering Innovative Thinking: How Do We Do It? What must be done to meet future needs for creative, innovative thinkers? This discussion will center on classrooms, schools, and education reform. But it also will venture into all of the segments of society listed above. I will explore the ideas of those who write and speak about creativity and the new idea of "innovation literacy." I will synthesize research and suggested strategies from a variety of sources, as well as offer any creative ideas that might occur to me.
I've been discussing what I think business leaders mean when they talk about needing creative and innovative workers. Reports from advanced technology companies suggest the theory that a bigger pool of STEM professionals and more STEM literacy = more innovation. My post linking to the Poynter Institute highlights the tension between creative technology experts and content creators. Then there is the recognition that artistic creativity is a community development tool—but that does not seem to be significantly linked to arts education.
Finally, what about people in manufacturing, sales, and services—the automotive worker who finds an innovative way to speed up production, the customer service representative or salesperson who thinks creatively when prospects have questions or customers have problems, the nurse who finds a better way to monitor patients or improve their morale? Do businesses recognize that kind of creativity as valuable? Do they feel that schools should be preparing all students to use creative thinking in just about whatever job they do?
In my earlier posts, I addressed the question "What does the private sector mean when they identify creativity and innovation as important 21st century skills. To summarize: Big, high tech industries want schools to do a better job of teaching math and science so that more students will complete advanced math and science courses in high school, earn STEM degrees in college, and enter STEM careers. From this larger pool will come more ideas, leading to breakthroughs in highly competitive areas, leading to American domination in key high-tech markets. Business-led efforts in regions and cities that are competing to become economic centers support the arts because that makes them "cool communities"—attractive to young, educated workers in a wide range of creative professions. I mentioned that companies known for hiring "creatives"—American Greetings or IDEO, for example—don't seem to be greatly concerned about shortages of creative thinkers. (IDEO's message seems to be more aimed at educating business leadership about how to foster innovation among their employees.)
A look at the list of organizations that sponsor the Partnership for 21st Century Skills suggests that companies most concerned about "soft skills" (which include creative and innovative thinking) are IT companies (such as Adobe, Microsoft, Cisco), media companies (Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Cable in the Classroom), creators of educational products and services (Pearson, Lego), and education groups and think tanks (National Education Association, American Association of School Librarians). Ford is the only partner that is not considered an IT or education-related company.
I am committed to the cause of education—helping systems, schools, and educators create environments where learning for every student is relevant, challenging and engaging.
I am fascinated with human creativity—BOTH the brilliant flame that is evident in powerful new ideas, technological breakthroughs, and truly original works of music, poetry, dance, theater, and the visual arts AND the everyday sparks that help people from all walks of life as they tackle the challenges that make life interesting, challenging, surprising, and joyful.
I just started iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind and already found something of value to my discussion about how schools can develop innovative thinking skills, particularly in relation to the use of arts learning experiences.
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