Three Projects, Infinite Possibilities
Framing the project work for the semester.
If I am going to commit to my intention to scaffold learning experiences more clearly, then I want to propose specific projects while inviting the opportunity for you to define them in your own terms. The three projects intentionally touch on different types of challenges we face in our ambition to transform minds. So although you will focus on one project for the semester we will collectively learn from how the projects intersect and where they become distinct.
The initial framing was to think across differing scales of intervention — from the individual, to a peer community, to society. We can begin by considering how we might navigate mindset change at the level of the individual. As an example, most educational psychology research focuses on the level of the student — for in a controlled experiment measuring the effect size of an intervention is perhaps simplest against an individual’s performance. However, we also know that our peers can be useful in supporting our interest in losing weight, working out, quitting smoking. But more than using our social networks to reinforce our commitment to behavior change we also understand the role of community for reinforcing old habits or shepherding in new thinking. As an example, we might look at social movements that know their work to be about changing hearts and minds. Lastly, beyond community there is also the more systemic, embedded practices of society (or within an institution) that have an impact on our collective mindset.
The three projects detailed below touch on these different scales of intervention.
Individual mindsets and domain transfer.
This project is grounded in the Performance Gym component of this course and the literature on the importance of non-cognitive skills. Mounting evidence asserts the correlation between these skills and our capacity to professionally and personally thrive. Yet to privilege the learning of these skills is to totally upend the way we prioritize curricular content in higher education. The Performance Gym is a pilot broadly designed to explore how we might explicitly call out the value of these skills, make sense of whether practicing these skills does increase mastery and in what ways might we make evident how someone changes over time. The outcome for this project may be to propose an alternate way to teach these skills.
For the baseline measure of success for this pilot (or any similar intervention) is whether the students can transfer the learning that comes from regular practice to other domains (other classes, home, professionally). This project will focus on ways to: amplify domain transfer, make sense of what triggers domain transfer, and how we might make visible the application of something so elusive as a new way of being in the world. The project is open-ended to the extent that it can zero in to focus on any of these factors. Most important is that the overall goal be for us to learn more about how this kind of curricular intervention might have the most traction for the student.
The focus here is on reflective, tactical and speculative exercises that might amplify the resonance and relevance of this work for students. This work primes us to be more mindful of the way we are in the world. How might we use design to augment the learning experience? Through embedded participation in the gym and in-depth interviews with your peers you will begin to examine how design may be used to maximize the potential translation of these experiences into transformed action.
Teachers’ mind frames and deep learning.
This project will be grounded by an Australian Research Council education grant into the relationship between teachers mind frames and deep learning (both already defined for you). Our role as designers is to focus on making sense of what would trigger teachers to change their mindset. We will be working with teachers at a school in Manhattan to pilot ideas and explore this question.
Teachers bring to the classroom ‘mind frames’ that define their practice — and rarely does a teacher deviate from these without some disruptive intervention. Changing mind frames is about more than just changing attitudes. It requires ‘recognition of possibilities’ for innovative practice. The widespread provision of innovative learning environments should create conditions conducive to new possibilities for innovative practice. A measure of success for the 4-year project will be if teachers are inclined and equipped to recognize these possibilities and translate them into actual classroom practice through a commitment to deeper learning.
This project has a focus on interdisciplinary research. Through co-design workshops with teachers you will explore the challenges of changing mind frames and communicate to the researchers how they can empathize with the teachers situation to amplify the traction of their research.
Societal stereotypes and subconscious apprehension.
This project is grounded in the literature on Stereotype threat. The term refers to a theorized mechanism by which people under perform (on tests, competitions, etc.) in response to awareness of stereotypes about their demographic group. It’s related to a largely subconscious apprehension about confirming the given negative stereotype, which hinders cognition, impairs concentration, and under some conditions reduces preparation or effort.
Stereotype research shows that girls perform better on science exams if they don’t have to declare their gender until the end of the test. If African American’s are told there is a correlation to one’s athletic prowess and mini-golf they score higher than if they are told that mini-golf scores correlate to intellect. One study shows that if people even imagine they are a girl or a boy this impacts performance!
This project will focus on what kind of material and narrative interventions might serve to counter stereotype threat. Through design probes and workshops with teachers and students we can begin to imagine how to shift the stories we tell of others and take on ourselves.
