How Are We Smart?

What does it mean to be intelligent? How does intelligence develop and vary in humans? How much do thinking dispositions contribute to intelligent behaviour? Can intelligence be learned? Flossie Chua discusses what we know about these questions.

These questions around what intelligence is and what it means have intrigued and inspired researchers at Harvard’s Project Zero for over 50 years, and our inquiry suggests that intelligence, far from being singular, innate and fixed, is in fact multifaceted and learnable. Rather than equating being smart with scoring the highest test scores, or being born with a fixed amount of ‘smartness’, we believe that being smart is having a profile of learnable intelligences that enables one to identify and solve problems, and to create products that are of value in contemporary society. In short, we propose that intelligence is multiple, dispositional and learnable.

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      string(5807) "and certainly there are actions to take to move that forward, but they’re not something that you just merely implement. It’s something that is an ongoing process. People should always be suspicious of anything new that comes along that doesn’t connect to good teaching or doesn’t connect the practices of what we know about engaging students deeply in learning. So we sometimes search for novelty in education today, rather than searching for refinement. When a teacher wants to get started using the Cultures of Thinking, where do they start? And how do they know if what they’re doing is correct?Traditionally, a lot of time is spent in schools talking with teachers about curriculum, giving them curriculum. Sometimes teachers are engaged with the curriculum, but not nearly enough. A lot of times the curriculum comes from outside. A lot of attention is given to instruction and to giving teachers new instructional techniques. But there’s a third leg of that stool, if you will, which is culture. We don’t give teachers the tools or means to construct that culture. So again, since this isn’t something to implement, a teacher can start anywhere. Where they do have to start is by examining their own teaching and culture. If you were to try to encapsulate what culture is, it is embedded in the messages we send and so, it’s important to start by looking at the messages we’re sending our students and how we send those messages through these eight cultural forces. A teacher has to become reflective, observant and aware. When we work with schools, we often engage teachers in observations both through video in the classroom and through going into one another’s classrooms. We really look at those eight cultural forces in action to see how they’re actually playing out and how they are shaping the culture. That awareness then becomes a lever for how you might begin to do that practice in your own classroom. We’ve also found that there’s no order for these eight cultural forces. They all work together. Again, because it’s never a matter of inserting or taking things out and since they’re always present, a teacher could start anywhere. Some teachers become very engaged with thinking about the environment they’re creating, and often once teachers become aware of the research on language and the many subtleties of language, they become very captivated by how they might use language more effectively. We often start with thinking routines in schools and one reason for that is because they give teachers something very concrete to do and they help to put thinking on the agenda. This helps teachers become more aware of thinking in general and the thinking their students are able to do. What happens is, as teachers use routines, they become more aware of their language. They might also become more aware of the opportunities they’re creating, of their allocation of time, of the role of modelling. So, all of the other cultural forces to begin to come into play. The routines are a very useful way to start. So how can you assess what’s going on? Is there evidence that this works better or differently from other methods? And assessment is always a big issue in education. How do we assess this? Well, one of the things that makes Project Zero so impactful, so long standing, and such a rich place to work is that we don’t produce programs that are aimed at improving test scores or even changing schools. All of our research focuses on learning. How do we understand learning? How do we support learning? How do we move that forward? So to the extent that schools are interested in learning, we do that. We don’t design programs that are meant to have teachers do something that will then automatically improve test scores. But we have seen that when schools and teachers focus on building the culture in their school, test scores go up. We have seen this happen all around the world whenever teachers put their focus there. And that’s consistent with findings from anyone who works in the field of thinking—when you focus on thinking, when you focus on understanding, it does contribute to good test scores. So it’s not a program that you evaluate, because evaluation is based on people’s implementation of something. This isn’t something you implement. This is a reflective tool. This is a process. This is a journey that people go through. We do absolutely see that in no way does this ever cause test scores to go down, and in fact we’ve seen some really dramatic inclines and gains.  One area that we have very deliberately assessed because it is a goal of ours, is whether students are developing as thinkers. 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Creative Teaching & Learning

Leveraging Culture with Ron Ritchhart

8 Jan 2019

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      string(5968) "maybe all but a few learners in our ever more inclusive classrooms—to show and communicate patterns of thinking. These tools leverage learning well beyond the common linear presentations of information that is found in text—now often for online learning. Ideas in linear text and now regularly around the world in bulleted Powerpoint presentations (while great achievements of human kind) under-represent the holism of human thinking that may be conveyed in visual-spatial-verbal modes. Importantly, for the longer term of a lifetime of the continuous learning through multiple jobs, when learners become fluent visual tools users, they are improving their awareness of how to transfer and adapt fundamental cognitive processes of mind and brain to new challenges. Learners’ need to be able to improve and transfer their common and unique thinking processes to different learning environments, virtually, in person, and through dynamic interactions with new AR, VR and AI applications.This means that in schools and the workplace, this generation of learners needs to be able to do the higher resolution, granular thinking of problem solving, decision making and moral reasoning borne of human intelligence and our evolutionary social-emotional place in the world. Metacognition is the key: we humans are uniquely evolved to think about how we are thinking, improving on our skills and abilities, and collectively taking action using tools of all kinds. But visual tools for thinking are quickly replacing the agrarian and industrial tools of past ages. Once fluent with a range of visual-spatial-verbal patterning tools, learners are much more able to be engaged in the kind of complex thinking and visual networking required of our age. We can explicitly facilitate and provide tools to all learners at any age for thinking in patterns and systems.There is urgency here: unfortunately, educational innovation almost always lags behind governing, political systems that direct school systems. Often education is a conserving activity, not a progressive one. Right now this new generation of learners around the globe is facing the daunting, transformative challenges of our day:seeking sustainable solutions within ecosystems from backyard decisions to climate change and global warming issues;within our own physical mind-body-brain systems as we create artificial intelligencemachines and use algorithm driven “search” engines;how to make daily decisions and take action as citizens within and across political systems.Making Thinking Visible and Thinking About the BoxBefore moving on to a brief view of types of visual tools and different uses, a key distinction needs to be made between “visual tools” and the popular term “visible thinking.” Visible thinking, as offered by educational leaders in the field, is used less to describe how to actually help students visually show their thinking, and more as a broad approach for making all students’ thinking the center of classroom practice. Visible thinking, oddly, is not much about explicit visual representations of thinking and learning processes as it is about using routines, strategies, and verbal communication that are explicit and metacognitive. Facilitating inner dialogue and having students verbalize their thinking, keeping records and journals of their thinking over time, engaging others in dialogue, and using technologies and projects to show what they know all fall under this broad concept of making visible thinking. So ‘making visible thinking’ may be recognized as an umbrella term for supporting teachers in creating a classroom environment grounded in routines that keep the processes of thinking as central to classroom engagement, rather than invisible, hidden away in a rigid content-dominant curriculum and assessment framework. There is a positive overlap in the Venn diagram of the two fields: visual tools and making thinking visible that is worthy of further discovery.Within this century, visual tools have become a main driver of the broad concept of making thinking visible, as this wide variety of tools are drawn from a wide range thinking processes and represented as visual thinking patterns. My first effort to define three types of visual tools (Hyerle, D. 1996) remains useful today in detailing how a range of tools is so important: brainstorming webs, graphic organizers, and thinking process maps.Brainstorming webs, commonly known as “Mindmaps” (Buzan, T.), are used for thinking creatively outside the box of the daily classroom and workplace mental routines. These open webbing approaches have been around for over forty years, and are still used to facilitate ‘blue sky thinking’ in schools and the workplace. Based on associative logic, brainstorming webs help us to break mental and emotional barriers, reflecting the millions of rapid firing of associations occurring in your brain … as you read these words and develop a schema for the content you are processing.A second type of visual design is driven by tools such as isolated flow charts, diagrams, and visual templates. These typical graphic organizers help students think inside the box as they are often highly structured by teachers or in curriculum guides. Graphic organizers have the most well researched and documented use over the past thirty years as they are easily integrated into teacher lesson plans. While teacher driven, these organizers help students see a big picture by analytically organizing information and are often assigned to students in order to guide a task or project. While"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

How To Use Visual Tools For Thinking, Learning And Feeling

28 Mar 2021

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      string(5501) "transfer of skills and dispositions developedthrough the L2L curriculum to other subject areas, as well as to the students’lives beyond the school gates. Thus, while any one feature of the programmemight have had a small but non-significant effect on student learning, themultimodal nature of the L2L programme at Sea View means that several suchfactors may have aggregated and interacted to produce the significant overallgains in subject learning outlined above.Despite the academic / conceptual nature of the curriculum as outlined inTable 2, Learning Skills teachers at Sea View found that because of the centralfocus on oral communication, much of their classroom practice centred aroundon things like interpersonal development, conflict resolution and discussionsabout emotional intelligence. This is evident in the students’ learning journalentries, where they often spoke about ‘finding their voice’ and ‘standing up tobullies’ (e.g. see Figure 5).Figure 5: Excerpts from three year 7 Reflective Learning Journals.ThinkingSkills68Volume6.4&7.1nCreativeTeaching&Learning69Volume6.4&7.1nCreativeTeaching&LearningThinkingSkillsProgressive ends, through traditional meansIt is worth noting that while aspects of the L2L curriculum might be consideredand even dismissed by some as ‘progressive’, the ethos at Sea View was todevelop a range of learning-centred skills and dispositions through traditionalteaching methods, including modelling, explaining, providing opportunitiesfor deliberate practice and plenty of high quality feedback, within a culture ofextremely high expectations and individual accountability.The teaching and learning practices that comprised the L2L curriculum at SeaView were selected because they have been found previously to be particularlyeffective at raising the attainment of students from economically disadvantagedbackgrounds. For example, a number of the most effective strategies identifiedin the Sutton Trust-EEF Toolkit (Higgins et al, 2011), which was designed to helpschools decide how best to invest the Pupil Premium, feature centrally in theL2L approach we developed at Sea View (e.g. feedback, meta-cognition, peertutoring, using exploratory talk for learning). So while the ‘bottom-up’ closingof the Pupil Premium attainment gap at Sea View was entirely welcome, it wasnot unexpected – rather, it simply suggests that the L2L programme at Sea Viewachieved what it set out to achieve.The findings presented here provide a persuasive case for extending thisapproach to other schools. In the last year, three of the original Learning Skillsteachers from Sea View have set up a not-for-profit organisation dedicated tohelping develop these practices in schools more widely. This is not an off-the-shelf approach – each school is different, and so we approach each schooldifferently. If you would like to find out more about the Learning Skills approach,or to arrange a free consultation, visit learning-skills.org.James Mannion is an associate at the London Centre for Leadership inLearning, UCL Institute of Education, and Director of Praxis EducationCIC. For more information, visit: learning-skills.org.References1. Aynsley, S., Brown, C. and Sebba, J., 2012. RSA Opening Minds: an evaluative review. London: RSA.2. Downey, C., Byrne, J. & Souza, A. (2013). Leading and managing the competence-based curriculum: conscripts,volunteers and champions at work within the departmentalised environment of the secondary school’ TheCurriculum Journal, 23(4), pp. 369-388.3. Flavell, J.H. (1976) Metacognitive aspects of problem-solving. In Resnick LB (Ed.), The Nature of Intelligence,Hillsdale NJ, Erlbaum.4. Hattie, J., Biggs, J., & Purdie, N. (1996). Effects of Learning Skills Interventions on Student Learning: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, Vol. 66, No. 2, pp. 99-136.5. Mannion J, & Mercer N (2016) Learning to learn: improving attainment, closing the gap at Key Stage 3. TheCurriculum Journal, 27, pp.246-271.6. Sutton Trust-EEF (2015). Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning: Summary for Schools Spending the PupilPremium. Accessed 7.7.15 at https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/toolkit-a-z/.7. Wall, K., Hall, E., Baumfield, V., Higgins, S., Rafferty, V., Remedios, R., Thomas, U., Tiplady, L., Towler, C. andWoolner, P. (2010) Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 4 and Learning to Learn in Further Education Projects:Annual Report, London: Campaign for Learning8. Watkins, C. (2001) Learning about Learning enhances Performance. London, Institute of Education NationalSchool Improvement Network (Research Matters series No 13).9. Watkins, C. (2010) Learning, Performance and Improvement. London: INSI-IoE.10. Whitebread, D. (2013) Self-regulation in young children: its characteristics and the role of communication andlanguage in its early development. Self-regulation and dialogue in primary classrooms. BJEP Monograph Series,11, 10 , 25–44.11. Willingham, D. (2007). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? American Educator, 31(2), 8–19.http://www.learning-skills.orghttp://www.learning-skills.orghttps://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/toolkit-a-z"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Rethinking Learning to Learn

14 Mar 2017

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      string(431) "... assessment practices to better develop understanding in their students. Thinking as dispositional and visible: Project Zero research revealed that good thinking is a matter of disposition and that thinking can be seen. Developing students’ dispositional motivations and skills are part of good thinking. However, findings from Project Zero research suggested ..."
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      string(5950) "the approaches and impact of pedagogies that foregrounded this performative view. Hundreds of schools around the globe have been inspired by this work and have reshaped curriculum and assessment practices to better develop understanding in their students. Thinking as dispositional and visible: Project Zero research revealed that good thinking is a matter of disposition and that thinking can be seen. Developing students’ dispositional motivations and skills are part of good thinking. However, findings from Project Zero research suggested the larger challenge is that students often lack the sensitivity to detect the opportunities to use their thinking skills. Developing students’ dispositions to be sensitive to occasions for thinking is something that effective teachers do. Occasions for thinking invite students to make their thinking visible, through their language, drawings and other symbol systems. In contrast to long-held views that considered thinking to be solely an invisible cognitive activity, thinking can be made visible through externalised representations. Project Zero projects and publications, such The Thinking Classroom,8 Making Thinking Visible9 and Creating Cultures of Thinking10 have offered practices to educators that are based on insights from this research. Artistry as cognitive and developmental: From its early pioneering work that examined how artists think and how children develop artistic skills, Project Zero has illuminated the cognitive dimensions of the arts and art-making. Artistic activity involves a variety of habits of mind that support skills such as looking and listening closely, reflection, and expression. Engaging in and with art, on its own merits, offers developmental opportunities for students that are uniquely different from those offered by other subjects. Projects and publications such as Arts PROPEL,11 Art Works for Schools12 and Studio Thinking13 illustrate how students engage with and through the arts as vital pathways for developing and demonstrating thinking. Assessment as an opportunity for learning: Evaluations and claims of learning are essential to any teaching and learning process. Without evidence, how are we to know that students are developing skills and knowledge? Moreover, the way learning is documented and assessed directly influences what gets taught. Over decades, Project Zero’s research has shifted conceptions of assessment in the classroom in important ways. The focus of the assessment should include the learning process as well as outcomes and products. The role of students can be shifted to become participants in self and peer assessments. And the role of the teacher changes to become a documenter of learning, gathering various types of evidence in order to build theories that they can test with their students and their fellow teachers. Publications from projects such as Teaching as Inquiry,14 Looking Together at Student Work15 and Visible Learners16 each depict educational practices that illuminate how assessments can be rich learning moments for students and teachers alike.These foundational perspectives mark Project Zero’s impact on the field of educational theory and practice. But what does the future hold? As researchers at Project Zero look ahead, issues of access and impact are foremost in their discussions. Increasingly, researchers are concerned with the cycle of how educators learn about research, adapt it into their practice and most importantly, how PZ researchers can learn from these educators. In the early days, access to PZ research was limited to its publications – scholarly journals and books were the only avenue to learn about the work.Today, Project Zero convenes events around the United States and the world, bringing educators together to explore their practice in relation to new findings. Project Zero’s international events, online courses and professional development workshops have become generative ways that teachers can engage with ideas while learning with and from other educators. In the past year, over a thousand educators participated in conferences and professional development workshops designed and led by Project Zero researchers. And over three thousand educators from around the world enrolled in online courses offered by the centre. In the coming years, Project Zero aims to advance offerings like these while continuing to raise funds to support the participation of many more educators who work in under-resourced settings.In terms of Project Zero’s future impact on the field of education, researchers are identifying contemporary challenges of developing human potentials. If you were to drop into meetings on the fourth floor of Longfellow Hall, you would hear researchers discussing questions such as: What does it mean to be globally competent in today’s complex world and how do such competencies develop? How do young people navigate the various ethical dilemmas of digital life? What is the nature of civic engagement in today’s society and how can civic dispositions be cultivated? These are just some of the questions that are shaping current discussions and future research at Project Zero. NotesPerkins, D. N. (1992). Smart schools: Better thinking and learning for every child. New York: Free Press.Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Perkins, D. N. (1981). The mind’s best work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso,"
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Arts-Based Learning

From Zero to Fifty: Marking a Half-Century of Project Zero’s Impact in Education

8 Jan 2019

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