I totally flaked on my intention to blog the “Learning and the Brain” conference last weekend.

They cram so much into the day, that I’d lose the chance at taking notes and processing some of the information if I simply reported on what was happening (which was the form many of the microblogs from the conference were taking). People were tweeting under the hashtag #lb30, but it wasn’t commentary, just factual reporting. No thinking, just recording. 

That bothers me. I go to those things to learn something new, but for about half of it, I felt like I was simply at a pep-rally for reforming education. Look, I’m there already. I know that cognitive neuroscience and our understanding of the brain and memory have opened up new avenues for re-examining the structures and practices of education. I need the practical thinking now. I don’t need to be convinced by Tony Wagner (I’ve now seen him make the same pitch three times). Everyone is saying the same thing, and they’re probably right (or at least they’re trendy). 

Here’s what I need: 

I need the support to create my own laboratory classrooms. I want to use what I’m learning about the brain and memory, and I want to carefully test the effectiveness of new practices in the learning environments I design. 

One of the problems I have with education research is that people too often make causal links when there is only correlation. Then they hold those links up as the new holy grail of learning, as the evidence for changing the way we do things. Yes. It’s evidence, but there’s another part to the story. 

I just heard bits from an interesting interview of Richard Feynman. He talks about how the world is made up of simple laws which we can understand, and which we can understand completely. When we isolate variables (which is what scientists try to do to create experimental conditions), we can understand the mechanisms which make something work and we can use those to predict outcomes (in itself it’s amazing that we can do this). 

However in reality, nothing is in isolation. There are so many variables unaccounted for that influence initial conditions, experimental conditions, outcomes. 

For example, in education, we can use knowledge of memory and learning and the brain to inform our practice, but we can’t say that the methods we develop from that knowledge represent the only correct practices. It depends on the population, it depends on the background of the students and the teacher, it depends on the institution, it depends on the genetic predispositions of both student and teacher, it depends on socio-economic-status, and even more importantly, it depends on cultural-historical context. The purporters of using research seem to be saying that all this new knowledge is pointing at one way we should teach students (sure - I’m oversimplifying a very nuanced argument) but it’s all based on knowledge we’ve arrived at through research we’ve done within the cultural-historical framework we’re currently living within. No education research is done in a vacuum. Researchers try best to control for the factors they can, but they’ll never be fully successful at isolating a process and examining it if they’re performing their experiments in real world conditions. And I question whether they should even try to isolate the experimental factors, because the point of the research is to improve education and education only takes place in environments when all those uncontrollable factors play a part in influencing outcomes. If the same research were done in a different cultural environment, there’s the possibility for changed results. So no matter how hard we try to find causal linkage in the realm of education research, those “truths” represent an illusion at best. 

I’m all for improving the system we have, but I will not accept that the science is telling us the truth about how people learn. All it can ever tell us is how people learn in the environments in which we do the research. I guess it ensures that education researchers will always have jobs, since as we change the system, they’ll have to do the research again and again to examine how the stability of their “truths” is maintained. 

Year after year I teach at least three terms of Art 1 Foundation. The course is designed as an introduction into basic design principles, which students explore through a variety of media and problem solving prompts. We have two versions of the course: a one-term (10 wk) course for sophomores and upper formers who have not had a freshman arts foundation experience, and a 2 term (20 wk) course for freshmen. Art 1 Foundation is a prerequisite for any electives offered by our department. 

After four years of teaching the course, any dissatisfaction I feel with my own methods for instructional design derive from three problems.

1. One obstacle in teaching a foundation course on art, especially the studio aspect, is that not every students has the same prior knowledge or experience with techniques, terms, or media. (This can be a benefit to the student or a detriment to his/her creativity and learning)
2. Another challenge is creating an environment which fosters creative risk taking while at the same time demanding that students generate work at their own standards for excellence. (Two ideas which are hard to develop alongside one another in the minds of 9th graders)
3. The last is a matter of values. As a department, we have a long tradition of valuing technical skill as a key to assessment in studio art. In today’s global culture of art, there is a place for technical skill, but the contemporary problems that define art are more about concept and less about representation. Trying to push a young students mind into the endlessly imaginative realm of problem solving, while maintaining a hard-edged focus on the ability to draw in perspective or shade with a pencil feels at odds. 

Art exists because there are certain things we struggle to put into words, things which are better expressed through the marriage of the creative mind with the physical world. To create meaning by the arrangement and transformation of material in alignment with our own unique vision is the essence of art practice, which is at best: personal, process-oriented, and nonverbal.

Putting a grade on that can be daunting, and I’ve heard the argument: we just have to do it! I’m not a fan of grading individual pieces of art, because my focus is on helping students develop dispositions. Qualities of thinking are more important to me than the ability to shade well, yet our department puts a huge focus on that. So I’m stuck trying to find a balance between teaching techniques and teaching modes of thought, between valuing the quality of a product and valuing the risk-taking and the creativity of the thinking that went into the product.

If any of you have ideas about how to do this, I’d love to know.

Meanwhile, I’ve begun to develop ways to express to my students, that in a way I have to look for both technique and skill proficiency, as well as risk taking and creative thinking. The problem is when you give a kid a single grade along with feedback about their learning and performance in both areas, they’re conception of where they can go becomes narrowed because of the grade. 

John Maeda talks about the difference between MIT and RISD, in that each embodies a different type of thinking. 

He says (at 1:05) that

“MIT is much more logical – left side. RISD is much more illogical, right side. Illogical means difficult to define in some kind of stepped out, algorithmic way. No cookie cutter recipe style of thinking here. It’s all kind of like free and transformative.”

If my goal is really to put value on this style of thinking, how do I best go about assessing it and at the same time encouraging it? By grading students, both against themselves and against their peers, I’ll unavoidably put some restrictions on the parameters of their thinking. I want to open up the boundaries for new types of thinking, not limit it; that, in a nutshell, is my problem with grading. 

A student wrote to me recently in response to a B+ I gave him. His response was “surprise”, he said. In an effort to help the student (and perhaps myself) understand what that grade meant, I responded with the following:

Thank you for your email and your question.

You showed a great deal of improvement over the course of the two terms. By the end of the year, your thinking about art had matured. Throughout ten weeks you experienced a number of opportunities to demonstrate the level of sophistication of both your conceptual understanding and your developing technical skill. The degree to which I assign a letter grade to a student has much to do with these dimensions, but overall depends upon a number of factors, including how far a student has come since the very beginning of the learning experience, the extent to which he/she has mastered both the understanding of concepts and the development of skills, the quality of the student’s creative thinking, his or her particular approach to solving visual problems and taking risks, as well as the extent to which a student contributes meaningfully to the classroom environment, including discussion.

Your performance during both terms demonstrates that you met the expectations satisfactorily, and in some areas demonstrated the potential to be outstanding.

As I said above, you improved in your understanding of design principles and the concepts in thinking about color and other elements of art. The understanding you arrived at in the end is a result not only of what has been presented to you throughout the term, but also the level of depth with which you tackled those issues in your own thinking. You arrived at new understandings, yet had the potential to take your understanding even further in the time we were together.

The quality of your work satisfied the expectations of “good” work in art foundation. I hope that you would agree that the quality of your work when compared with others and with the work you were doing at the beginning of the term, has the potential to enter into the “outstanding” realm, but hasn’t gotten there yet.

The quality of your creative thinking is also “good”, but in order for it to be “outstanding” you would have more explicitly needed to demonstrate use of creative “out of the box” thinking in the way you used principles. Each piece you create demonstrates the level with which you use creativity to your advantage to make an interesting image. How interesting that image is to a viewer is the metric with which I measure the level of creativity. You use the design principles well, but in the future should look for ways to increase the level of creativity.

All in all you had two good terms in art foundation, but you still have progress to make in terms of challenging the level of your creativity, in mastering technical skills, and making informed, interesting, and creative decisions in compositional layout.

I hope this helps you better frame your the strategies you adopt for improvement in art.

My response articulates, for the most part, what I expect of students in the environment I have to work. It however is not the ideal I have for educating students to be creators and creative thinkers.

I’d like to develop some ways to get the students to better understand where I want them to go in their thinking as well as to develop more effective methods of assessing those qualities which I think are important. I’m at a loss to see how I can accurately assess dispositional thinking without it seeming subjective (which I think it might have to be to an extent).

Does anyone have ideas?

I hear educators say that “Technology is a tool and we have to use it wisely to achieve our outcomes” in schools. We decide what we want our students to know/understand/do and find the technology that best suits that type of learning. Targeted Technology Use. Sure, sounds nice, and perfect, but crucially: it sounds manageable. 

But, it’s also true that the technology will change us. Any tools we use always end up transforming us: the way we think, the way we do business, what we expect from ourselves and others. (Read Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together)

In that sense, I’m all for thinking about how we can best anticipate the ways in which technology will change us once we integrate it effectively into the classroom. You see, the bad is always going to accompany the good. Certain dispositions or skills or content knowledge will have to be sacrificed if we want our students to authentically and wholly be transformed through 21st century education. 

Mostly, we need to have clearer vision of what we want our students to be able to do, how they should think et c.  We’ve heard a lot about critical thinking, creativity, flexibility, curiosity, collaboration, self-directed learning, the coaching model, teachers as guides, inquiry driven learning, the science of memory, neurocognition, etc. 

Gosh; THAT school doesn’t sound like mine (and likely never will). Maybe parts of my classes sound a little bit like it, but it’s an upstream run for this fish. 

The problem is dealing with the loss of control. 

21st century learning is not about someone telling you what’s important, it’s about discovering that on your own. It’s about being inspired to know something, being able to figure out how you can find the means to learn it, it’s about learning and mastering it. But one thing it’s not about is training for a particular trade, which is essentially what our current system of education has been set up for. To give people access to broad swaths of knowledge which they can then choose from as they narrow their focus and choose career paths. 

But teachers and schools are no longer the keepers of that knowledge. It’s readily available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. 

So what is our job all about? 

This is the question we need to answer, and until we do, for many educators, students, parents, institutions, it’s going to feel like we’re waiting for the fog to lift. And in the meantime, as we’re lost in it, we’ll grab on to all the devices we can and tell ourselves it’s about finding the right tools for the things we want to do, which are based on the things we did before, which are pretty much the things we’ve always done. By seeing technology as a tool, we convince ourselves that this transition is going to be easier and that we’ll be in control every step of the way. 

I think we hate to admit that we’re lying to ourselves, and we need to face the truth, recognizing that the waters are troubled and there’s no easy bridge across them. Only then can we really plan for what the future holds in store.

These days articles are published everyday about the disadvantages of technology in education. Will Richardson recently tweeted about his frustration that the media always make the argument “black and white, rather than right time, right place.”

I cannot argue with the fact that technology has made my life easier (even if it’s only made it easier to live a life where I’m a slave to technology). 

I have a class of 9th graders headed to the Metropolitan Museum today. In preparation for the trip I was able to go on the Met’s website, examine the items on display in the Greek & Roman galleries, then easily take these kinds of screen shots to put into their assignment sheets:

Using the Met’s website made life much easier for me. First I could make the assignment more exciting for the students by assigning them each a unique artifact instead of assigning everyone the same artifact or asking them to choose an artifact (and hope that it fits the criteria I’m looking for). Second, I was able to preview the collection and choose the most relevant pieces without having to travel into the city and spend the day looking at the Met (some might consider this a disadvantage), and third, the Met not only tells you exactly what’s on view in the galleries, but also in which gallery a visitor can find the piece, so my kids won’t be aimlessly wandering the galleries without a clue where to look. And to think I did this all from the comfort of my living room at midnight last night. 

Now my kids have something of a scavenger hunt in the Met, with an interesting assignment attached: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JvMPrHLm1thb5HSq_z7m3wo0FFhiTtuihiptrbCwL9Q/edit?hl=en_US

Thanks to the Met for their great website!