In our last episode, we defined what it means to ideate and stretched our thinking with the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). This lays the foundation of asking a variety of questions to and with our learners, so they are able to generate, revise, prioritize, and plan with their questions in mind. As we create this culture of thinking, we are ready to think more outside of the box to ideate real solutions to issues within our organization. As previously mentioned, we must do this process entirely with empathy. We are asking others to change their viewpoints and alter their ways of operating within the organization. It’s huge, so tread carefully and kindly. Over the past five weeks, I’ve been participating in the #CITLreads book club on Misty Paterson’s book, Pop-Up Studio: Responsive Teaching for Today’s Learners. While going through this five week process, my eyes were opened to new strategies on how to leverage inquiry and conceptual connections with our learners and peers. In particular, the 4A’s Guiding Principles stood out as a scaffold in the inquiry process. After all, isn’t coming up with new and innovative ideas part of the inquiry process? Misty Paterson came up with a simple system to help you take a look at your curriculum in a fresh new viewpoint. We will apply this concept to problem-solving. You can use one or all of all of the 4A’s to spark your ideation process. We will have a challenge for each to help you stretch and grow. AbundanceMisty suggests, “Abundance evokes the spirit of generosity and respect. We honor and contribute to the multitude of ways we can come to know and respond to the world through our senses.” When we engage in abundance, we are trying to expand our thinking beyond what we “see” and make connections beyond our imagination. This is where true out-of-the-box thinking starts. It’s looking at everyday objects and going beyond. For example, you may see a house key as just a thing that unlocks a door.
The teaching goal: “Turn the seemingly trivial into the transformative.” The learning goal: “There are so many ways to think about this!”
Challenge Take a look at a topic within your unit of inquiry. Go beyond the surface features of the topic and try to ideate numerous ways of looking at it that you may have not considered before. AuthenticityMisty purports, “Authenticity is about being vigilant in helping learners connect their passions to the broader community. In other words, it's about appreciating that the concepts we explore together are relevant and significant to the world at large.” The first thing that comes to my mind is making personal connections to the learning by applying it to my real-world context. Then, it’s about seeing how my view of this context is shaped within my local community, my country, and the world beyond. In this way, we make generalizations about issues and how it impacts humanity. The teaching goal: “Realize relevancy through real-life relationships and applications.” The learning goal: “This is important to me, and it’s important to others working with this too.”
ChallengeTake a look at the same topic within your unit of inquiry from abundance. Now, stretch your thinking to find ways to connect it to your student’s everyday lives, your local community, your regional community, and other places around the world. AwarenessMisty states, “Awareness sparks new ideas and insights; it is the essence of the aha moment. Aha moments happen when we connect conceptual dots, whom we see relationships and patterns between ideas.” We all have aha moments, but do we teach our learners how to spot them when they happen? This is a huge part of metacognitive thinking. To be honest, I don’t know how explicit I was with my learners when I was teaching. It’s so necessary for learners, because it aids in the process of making conclusions. The teaching goal: “Activate Ahas.” The learning goal: “Aha! Yes! It’s like…”
ChallengeTo continuously stretch our thinking, we will build upon prior learning by using the same unit of inquiry. Now, you will examine what strategies have been planned or added to the unit to facilitate aha moments. What reflection tools will be used to spark these aha moments? How will learners self-regulate the process? AnewMisty remarks, “Anew fosters deeper learning of concepts over time through recursive inquiry. Creating opportunities to return to ideas, to connect and meet ideas again and again as they grow in sophistication, fosters complexity within a study and enhances conceptual thinking.” I love how you can “see” something new in the same reading materials, videos, interactions with others after some time and experience. This is why I re-read texts every 1-2 years. I have grown in my understanding and truly transformative text will provide me with opportunities to start anew. The teaching goal: “Spark new ideas and share what’s swirling.” The learning goal: “I never thought of it in that way before!”
ChallengeWith your unit of inquiry, what are some things you have done previously that transform learning experiences of your learners? Which ones can be stretched to incorporate “what if” or “how about” thinking? How can it incorporate more learner agency to show their process rather than a product? As you can see, I absolutely love the framework of the 4A’s in guiding my ideation process. It requires us to examine our practice and find new ways of stretching our thinking. Thank you Misty Paterson for making this process easy, yet meaningful at the same time.
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