MLS030 (July 2014)

What

IF

John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Fostering Diagnostic Confidence in the Creative Problem Solving Process

Creative Problem solving Inventive thinking

Problem finding

Brainstorming

Divergent Thinking

Convergent Thinking

Need to challenge

Assumption!

MLS030 (July 2014)

What

IF

John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Fostering Diagnostic Confidence in the Creative Problem Solving Process

WHY MUST SCHOOLS/ TEACHERS/ STUDENTS ....?

What

IF Fostering Diagnostic Confidence

INNOVATION

PROGRAMME

REVIEWING

Formulating Challenges: In my current course on Creative Problem Solving, I invited my students who are Heads of Dept to conceptualise a Future School in 2020. From the data thus far, many seemed curtailed and fixated with old notions of schooling and not daring to challenge assumptions, beliefs, systems and structures. Like to invite you to "play along". Question and challenge by first asking- "why must xxx...." or "what’s stopping xxx..." (pls do not rationalise or refute any question)

CURIOUS

MINDS

Creative Problem solving Inventive thinking

Problem finding

Brainstorming

Testing

IINSPIRING

What

IF Fostering Diagnostic Confidence in the Creative Problem Solving Process

MLS030 (July 2014) John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.

ASKING WhatIF?

MLS030 (July 2014) John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.

What

IF Fostering Diagnostic Confidence in the Creative Problem Solving Process

“The guiding force that creates a product is purpose or intent.”

Perkins, 1981

Why must schools have timetable? Why must students go into a school everyday?

STRUCTURES

Schools are redundant in the future. Why

should there be schools at all?

Why do schools exist in the first place?

STRUCTURES

why must government run schools!?

STRUCTURES

Why should schools be defined by the

structures and perceptions of how we used

to be taught rather then redefining the

educational potential of good learning?

STRUCTURES

Why must schools operate on the FEAR of failure?

Learning

Why do teachers teach vs why do students learn? What do teachers teach vs what do students learn? When do teachers teach vs when do students learn? Where do teachers teach vs where do students learn? Who do teachers teach vs who do students learn from? How do teachers teach vs how do students learn?

Learning

How can learning be more fun?

LEARNING

Character building and values based education as a means to achieve its ends of meeting the purpose of education.This is based on the assumptions where the following criteria have been met 1. School leaders and core team have travelled wide, long and far

enough to know best practices around the world 2. Community recognized the worth of the brand of education it is

offering (which is not measured in the short term of the first 5 years by academic results)

3. Parents are worldly enough to know what is the meaning of 'beyond academics' needs of the 2040 global market

4. School have garnered enough support from the parents (monetary and expertise) to run its programs

5. Professionalism among staff that sees life long learning and accountability as part of their personal responsibilities

6. Strong para- educator teams and strong admin team to handle the mundane work which takes away time and energy from creative teachers.

7. ICT-enabled to achieve efficiency and efficacy.

LEARNING

ASSessment

Why can’t students decide what forms and what standards they should be assessed if we are truly focused on student-centred learning?

ASSessment

Why must grades be the overall measure of student learning?

Why must school achievement be based on quantifiable results when learning is primarily not quantifiable?

Why must quantity be the standard at schools; what happened with quality?

ASSessment

So, is it literacy(ordinary pass) OR proficiency (merit or distinction)

that is driving our assessment goals? Requiring our students to

complete stacks and stacks of assignments, spend so much time

on practicing incredible amounts of exam papers definitely robs

and kills the joy of learning.

Why must we spend in inordinate amount of time and effort to drill our students to achieve assessment results in subjects like mathematics and sciences where the pass rate and distinction rates are so high? Why must we expect and require them to complete so many sets of exam papers from their schools and other schools, to have so many preliminary exams, etc...

Why aren't we looking more closely at how we are using time in schools? Why must schools be run from 8am to 3pm with the ubiquity of technology?

Tech and Time

Why can’t schools run till the night

since some students learn best at

night?

Why can't subjects be taught in 3-hr blocks? Why must schools operate on the fear of failure?

Tech and Time

Why must schools have 'teachers'? How might we emancipate teachers and students? Why are teachers civil servants? Why must teachers be subjected to stack ranking?

TEACHERS

Why should teachers still be organised by departmental level if we are advocating authentic applied learning where students discover relevance in learning and problems of tomorrow are more interdisciplinary in nature?

TEACHERS

What's stopping teachers from looking at whether they themselves are behaving in waits they expect students to behave? What's stopping teachers from critically examining the ethical justification behind school rules?

TEACHERS

SUBJECTS

Why can't there be greater integration among subjects? Why can't we teach real, proper ethical reasoning in the classroom, as a proper subject, in which students grapple with real ethical issues in an open, critical manner? Everyone seems to agree that we should teach empathy, so why not make Literature, probably the best subject for this, compulsory at primary and secondary levels?

SUBJECTS

Why are children not given an option to learn what they want

to learn?

SUBJECTS

Why aren't we paying proper attention to how different

subjects and programmes are working, or not working,

together to achieve educational outcomes?

Maybe we should have a randomiser cough up a sequence of curriculum units from an overall multidisciplinary list every

week. Then teachers are required to teach those units regardless of content

after one week's lead prep time. Also, the teachers will be randomised regardless of

subject. Finally, the students will grade the teachers on ability to improvise.

.

SUBJECTS

At the end of the year, all teachers will have learnt a lot, developed

transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary sensibilities, and be a lot more creative. Students will also be more flexible! And

nobody will be able to overanalyse anything.

SUBJECTS

why must children be placed in classes according to date of production?

STUDENTS

Why must schools discourage 'out-of-the-norm' thinking? Why must schools force every child to follow the same learning pace and demand that they learn certain things in a particular order?

STUDENTS

STUDENTS

Why can't students put up a list of the topics they are interested in and teachers conduct their lessons based on that list with more student participation since the topic came from them?

STUDENTS

Once a child can read, why is there a need to prescribe set curriculum that a child *must* show a high level of mastery before the child is deemed competent?

BE CURIOUS: “There must be a better way.”

SHOW EMPATHY: “It’s not about me.”

EMBRACE FAILURE:

“Mistakes are opportunities for

learning.”

Inspiring Curious Minds

“This thread is poisonous... It's making me why am I subjecting my child to school!”

“it is liberating. This is

what education ought to

be, liberating...”

The discourse of whether we are

parents, teachers, administrators or

academics, we can and perhaps we

should, galvanise different

communities in order tomove

education forward in order to stay

ahead of the curve.

Your inputs have provide ways we

can radically disrupt education.

Inspiring Curious Minds

click here to start timer

20 minutes

Ladder of Abstraction

• After analysing the DATA, pick the one that YOU feel is the most important to work on. • Need not be the challenges/ questions with *hits*

• With the chosen problem, analyse it again to see if it is really the problem that we want.