A focus on experiencing and appreciating art as a way to help students develop ways of thinking that support thoughtful learning.
A Reflection by Tyla Bowers
How can we as educators help our students to become better thinkers? The Artful Thinking Project helps teachers use works of visual art and music in ways that strengthen student thinking and learning in the arts and beyond. Using the artist's palette as a central metaphor, the Artful Thinking "palette" consists of six thinking dispositions which strengthen students' intellectual behaviors. These dispositions are developed through Thinking Routines, which are easy to learn and can deepen students' thinking in the classroom (Artful Thinking. 2014. Retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/artful-thinking).
Image retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/artful-thinking).
Critical Thinkers Develop Routines
“Good thinkers know how to think creatively, critically and deeply. And they actually do it. Good thinkers are in the habit of observing, analyzing and questioning. Critical thinkers develop routines; these routines are simple structures - a set of questions or a short sequence of steps. They are easy to remember, practical, and to invite a broad range of thinking moves.” (Borchardt. 2014. [Video] https://vimeo.com/108000553) One strategy of artful thinking is the See/Think/Wonder strategy. The beauty of this strategy is that you can display any piece of artwork and ask students to answer the following questions:
What do you see? Explain all the details that you see in this artwork.
What do you think about what you see? List all of the thoughts that you have about the details that you see.
What do you wonder? What questions do you still have about this artwork?
This See/Think/Wonder strategy creates a routine that stimulates critical thinking. When students record what they “See” in the artwork, they are creating a routine of observing. When students “Think” about what they see, they are analyzing what they see. And finally, when students “Wonder” about the artwork they see, they are questioning what they have analyzed. In these three simple steps, a teacher can engage students and propel them into a habit of becoming a critical thinker. Once a student develops this habit, it becomes natural and they will start to use it across disciplines. They will find themselves becoming more patient observers and incorporate questioning into their daily lives. The most effective means for preserving the questions, notes, musings and sketches that are rendered from a thinking routine is a notebook or sketchbook., It doesn’t have to be a fancy or expensive notebook - just a place to record ideas. If digital is more desirable, an interactive notebook or online journal can be kept minimized on your screen for that moment when a question arises. If you prefer a tactile journal, a sketchbook or composition notebook is a great tool for hand-written notes, hand-drawn sketches or even painted or collaged ideas.
Masterful Thinking and Employing Volition
Our greatest innovator with regard to artful thinking is quite old, as in 14th-15th Century-old, to be exact. Leonardo da Vinci illustrates the act of artful thinking for us through his notebooks, drawings, inventions and works of art. He illustrates his keen observation skills through notebook entries - which are remarkably organized depositories of his stream of consciousness. According to scholars that have studied the thousands of pages contained in his notebooks, Da Vinci uses his notebooks as a place to “record jokes and fables, the observations and thoughts of scholars that he admired, personal financial records, letters, reflections of domestic problems, philosophical musings and prophecies, plans for inventions, and treatises on anatomy, botany, geology, flight, water and painting.” (Gelb, 1998, p 57). Da Vinci inherently uses thinking routines on a daily basis. His notebooks are loaded with the See/Think/Wonder thinking routine. Using his keen observation skills, Da Vinci’s curiosity is aroused by his desire to look more closely at his surroundings. His curiosity of birds, their anatomy and the concept of flight leads him to create sketches and models for what resemble human flying machines. His curiosity leads him to go so far as to perform autopsies on human cadavers just to gain a better understanding of the human skeletal and muscular structures. By doing this, Da Vinci is observing, analyzing and questioning; the knowledge he seeks is meaningful. This intense act of critical thinking is preparation for the goal and reward he seeks. Da Vinci uses his findings to help him paint the perfect human form - so perfect that only The Devine could supersede it. Fast forward to our 20th century and current day designers - scientists like Watson and Crick who after learning from failed models and mistakes, discovered the standard model of the DNA double helix. Or Elon Musk, who in a memo prompted by a napkin sketch, presented a futuristic, yet completely plausible design for mass transit (Henriksen, D. 2015. p2). Who ever thought we would see privatized space rockets sending our own country’s astronauts into space? Who ever thought we could return the rocket components back to Earth to reuse them for the future rocket launches? These critical and forward-thinking individuals show us how it is possible to dream big. Driven by their own volition, these designers have proven to us how to stay on task, overcome their difficulties and created the unthinkable. They display for us how critical thinking crosses disciplines and requires observing, analyzing and questioning to reach the highest level of thinking.
A Closing Question
In Michael Gelb’s book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, we are posed with the question of “what happened to the kids who asked too many questions?” He of course, is making reference to the notion of “overworked, beleaguered teachers” and students who are “persistent question askers” being likened to a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder and “treated” with medication (Gelb. 1998. p65.) He makes a comparison of Da Vinci and his level of curiosity to “that student” who asked too many questions. Gelb poses a serious question for our current post-industrial education system and for our model of student success. Have we killed the questions? Have we killed curiosity? Are we killing our student’s ability to think on a critical level? Our education system is notorious for teaching “to the test” - it rewards students that figure out “the right answer.” If a student is driven by curiosity to solve a problem and the solution fails, did the student fail? Or was it experience? We are experiencing a time where it feels like we have no time. Everything is on demand and at our fingertips. We are overloading ourselves with information, but we are not asking questions. Our students are experiencing an intellectual fall-out. If we continue down this path and choose not to instill artful and critical thinking habits in our students, did we fail our students? Does humanity fail?
References:
Artful Thinking. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/artful-thinking
Borchardt, Sue. (2014). Thinking Routines [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/resources/thinking-routines-video
Henriksen, D., Terry, C., & Mishra, P. (2015). Modeling as a trans-disciplinary formative skill and practice. TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, 59(2), 4–9. https://doi-org.oclc.fullsail.edu/10.1007/s11528-015-0830-5
Gelb, Michael J., 1998, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Everyday, Bantam Dell, New York, NY
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