Human-Centered and Relational

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From Dr. Lee-Anne Gray, “Making Education More Like Real Life Through Design Thinking,” Huffington Post, 9/18/2013

Design thinking asks students to become investigators in their world, attempt to solve problems, bridge gaps of knowledge independently, collaboratively, and resourcefully.

From Tyler Thigpen, “Taking a Relationship-Centered Approach to Education,” Education Week, 9/10/2013

What if schools used real-world scenarios to teach? What if learning were tied to complex problem-solving? What if students graduated from high school knowing how to negotiate peace treaties, stimulate depressed economies, and reduce obesity rates in America?

Now imagine a school where students and teachers decided collaboratively that the future of energy, the problem of inadequate access to safe drinking water, and the issues surrounding genetically modified organisms were among the topics of study. In this model, students would be taught to use skills and knowledge from the traditional disciplines—math, science, English, social studies, and so on—to take steps toward scaling and solving aspects of these complex issues. Teachers would work together, leveraging their content expertise in service of a problem. Students would navigate complex, unpredictable situations using a multitude of educational resources. This real-world problem-solving approach would partner with expert field practitioners, community members, research scientists, political leaders, and business owners, all showing students ways of addressing the pressing problems facing the world, from the local to the global.

“Design Thinking” and “Transdisciplinary Education” may be called buzzwords and trends by some. For me, they are long overdue innovations in the school world that promote and empower relevant, real-world solution seeking as the foundations and trunk lines of time spent in school. School should be life. School is life.

At their core, #DT and #TDed are about the corps. The people. Design thinking and transdisciplinary education are human centered and relational. They are about inquiry, empathy, and impact.

@MVPSchool is about #DT and #TDed. #ILoveMySchool

What an honor it has been to see the core/corps of our school discussed in Education Week and The Huffington Post these past few days. Thank you.

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Formative assessment IS design thinking. #DTk12Chat

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Teachers are designers. Either intentionally or unintentionally, maybe. But teachers are designers.

Some feel that the word, the title, “designer” is being co-opted by too many industries and sectors and professions. But how could one really deny the essence of teacher as designer.

Teachers design with curriculum, learning environment, instructional methodology, and assessment. Together, these elements create pedagogical design.

Because of the heightened attention that design and design thinking are getting, we know more about how great designers design with the needs of the user clearly at the center of the design. Discovery, ethnography, examination, observation, interview – all of these and more are the tools of great design and design thinking.

For the truly intentional, great teachers, formative assessment is an invaluable tool – a system really – to discern the deepest needs of the user… the “student.” Through purposeful use of formative assessment, great teachers – great pedagogical designers – collect critical information by way of discovery (assessment), ethnography (assessment), examination (assessment), observation (assessment), interview (assessment), etc.

But, for these assessments, these tools of discovery and empathy, to be design-employed, the insights gained must be used to inform and transform the pedagogical design for the improvement of the user experience. Better known as “deep learning.”

If an assessment is merely something at the end of instruction to provide a grade for a paper grade book or digital SIS (student information system), then enormous potential is being wasted, underutilized, undervalued. Assessment, used as design tool, can form better design for curriculum, instruction, learning environment, assessment, etc. To reach this potential, though, we need to be intentional as designers.

If you are pursuing design thinking at your school, perhaps you are using the d.School model:

  • Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test.

Or perhaps you are using the model from Design Thinking for Educators:

  • Discovery, Interpretation, Ideation, Experimentation, Evolution.

At Mount Vernon, we’ve developed our own model of design thinking:

  • DEEP – Discover, Empathize, Experiment, Produce.

Or perhaps you are working to nurture and build innovators and tracking with such work as Innovators DNA, purposefully infusing the known traits of innovation:

  • Observing, Questioning, Experimenting, Networking, Associating.

Among all of these models, and among the practices of the most highly respected designers and design thinkers, empathy lives at a core – through intentional and purposeful discovery, observation, and ethnography – in order to enhance and improve design for the needs of the user.

Assessment – formative assessment – is essential for one to be a design-intentional teacher.

How are you using assessment as a systemic tool for exceptional design? For the user experience? For the learners?

#ItsAboutLearning

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Is School Enough? via PBS (HT @aenclade, @willrich45)

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amanda enclade (@aenclade)
9/1/13, 4:12 PM
Preview of a soon to be released PBS video. Wondering: why can’t passions exist in school as well? buff.ly/18bFe2B via @willrich45

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“Is School Enough?” Preview from PBS.