The revised Bloom's taxonomy (Fig. 1) is a framework derives by Benjamin Bloom in 1956 to categorise the order of thinking skills where the tip of the pyramid display higher order thinking. With Create as a verb (Fig. 2), Art provides a platform for pupils to display acts of planning, problem solving and meaning making for improvements or radical innovations.
Figure 1. Extracted from http://thesecondprinciple.com/teaching-essentials/beyond-bloom-cognitive-taxonomy-revised/
Figure 2. Extracted from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/
While there are different versions of the design process or so called thinking process. The design thinking model (Fig. 3) by d. school, as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University is referenced as it's often held in high regard for how interdisciplinary design thinking and creativity can be taught.
Figure 3. Design Thinking Process
There is no lack of information of Design Thinking when you run a search online. I was worried that Design Thinking or its counterparts such as Maker Movement or STEAM education are a fad so I read up on the following articles just to wrap my head around these ideas first. You can also sign up for an account on Coursera for this course, Tinkering Fundamentals to get started. Related articles/ books:
Petrich, M., Wilkinson, K. & Bevan, B. (2013). It looks like fun but are they learning? PDF
James Haywood Rolling Jr (2016) STEAM Locomotion, Art Education, 69:6, 4-5
Don Glass & Colleen Wilson (2016) The Art and Science of Looking: Collaborative Learning Our Way to Improved STEAM Integration, Art Education, 69:6, 8-14
Kelly Gloss & Steve Gross (2016) TRANSFORMATION: Constructivism, Design Thinking, and Elementary STEAM, Art Education, 69:6, 36-43
Kelly W. Guyotte, Nicki W. Sochacka, Tracie E. Costantino, Joachim Walther & Nadia N. Kellam (2014) Steam as Social Practice: Cultivating Creativity in Transdisciplinary Spaces, Art Education, 67:6, 12-9
Sarabeth erk (2016) Designing for the Future of Education Requires Design Education, 69:6, 16-20
AnnMarine Thomas, Making Makers: Kids, Tools and the Future of Innovation. (2014) Maker Media: USA
Wagner, T. (2012). Creating Innovators: The making of young people who will change the world. USA, New York
Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. USA: New York
Schell, J.(2008). The art of game design: A book of lenses. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers :USA
Hi teachers! How did you spent first week of the Summer break? The pessimist in me tells me it's ending real soon. How nice to sleep in and losing track of time doing your own things. Just last Sunday, I've contributed an art activity for Pesta Ubin 2017. I'm lucky to have my friend, HT, to help out this year. We went to Pulau ubin the previous week to do some preparation. Thanks to the organiser, Ria, and Uncle Lim, the drink stall owner, who lend us his shop space so that we don't have to break our backs sitting on the ground. Our canvas were the treated coconut husks. Uncle Lim kept them for us and after sunning and sanding them, they were good for painting. Things were moving at a good pace but the sun was unforgiving. I love the smell, sight (grains) and quality of natural wood. I still marvel at how thoughtful the way nature works: you can have something to eat (coconut flesh) and drink (coconut water) and paint (husk) all-in-one compact design. You can view more pictures here.
I decided I was only going to do things for the fun of it and only that afternoon as I was taking lunch some kid threw up a plate in the cafeteria. There was a blue medallion on the plate - the Cornell sign. As the plate came down it wobbled. It seemed to me that the blue thing went round faster than the wobble and I wondered what the relationship was between the two - I was just playing; no importance at all. So I played around with the equations of motion of rotating things and I found out that if the wobble is small the blue thing goes round twice as fast as the wobble. I tried to figure out why that was, just for the fun of it, and this led me to the similar problems in the spin of an electron and that led me back into quantum electrodynamics which is the problem I’d been working on. I continued to play with it in this relaxed fashion and it was like letting a cork out of a bottle. Everything just poured out and in very short order I worked the things out for which I later won the Nobel Prize.
Richard Feynmann, Nobel Prizewinning Physicist
Above is an excerpt from Feynmann connecting the dots and how he continues to wonder through adulthood. Contrary to people's beliefs, creativity is found only in the Arts. Instead of dedicating it to a discipline, think of it as a behaviour or mindset. To find out more, read a report on Creativity, Culture and Education here.
Sir Ken Robinson speaks about education and creativity. His book Creative Schools expands on the above talk. While some of the ideas are not seemingly applicable immediately, they make a lot of sense as ideas for incubation. If you are also curious about why policies are peppered with rhetoric like innovation, entrepreneurship, 21st century skills then you might be interested in watching the videos or reading the books. He's a very humorous speaker and definitely not a dull moment! A thought-provoking statement is when Robinson says that
"as children grow up, we start educating them progressively from the waist up, and then we focus on their heads and slightly to one side..."
He went further to speak about the hierarchy of subjects and within the arts, visual arts and music are usually given higher priority than drama and dance.
