Finding Your Passion

1
Finding Your Passion

• Sir Ken Robinson, PhD
• The Element How Finding Your Passion Changes
  Everything

2
Creative Individuals Who Struggled in School

• Gillian Lynne (dancer choreographer)
• Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons)
• Paul McCartney (Beatle and songwriter)
• Did not finish high school
• Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac drummer)
• Gordon Parks (self-taught photographer
  film-maker)
• Richard Branson (Virgin Records/Atlantic)

3
The Element

• The meeting point between natural aptitude
  personal passion
• Features
• Aptitude (I get it)
• Passion (I love it)
• Conditions
• Attitude (I want it)
• Opportunity (Where is it)

4
Narrow View of Intelligence

• History begins with Aristotle and Plato
• Fixed trait
• Demonstrated by talent with numbers and/or words
• Contributions of the Enlightenment
• Importance of logic and critical reasoning
• Importance of evidence in support of scientific
  ideas
• Mass Public Education during Industrial
  Revolution
• Need for quick easy forms of selection
  assessment
• Most important ideas can be conveyed via words or
  mathematical expressions
• We can quantify intelligence rely on IQ and
  standardized tests to determine who is intelligent

5
History of Standardized Testing

• Alfred Binet one of creators of IQ test
• intended it to be used to determine what students
  had special needs so they could get appropriate
  schooling
• Did not believe intelligence was fixed
• Lewis Termin Stanford University
• 1916, revision of Binets test (Stanford-Binet
  Test)
• Eugenicist
• argued poverty criminality were inherited
  traits and that they could be identified via IQ
  testing
• argued entire ethic groups inherited these
  traits, so their children should be given less
  rigorous education discouraged or deterred from
  reproduction

6
SAT Test

• Carl Brigham, inventor
• Eugenicist
• Conceived test for military
• Rejected both the SAT and eugenics 5 years later
• By then, Harvard and other Ivy League schools
  were using it to measure applicant acceptability
• Been used for nearly 7 decades
• John Katzman, founder of Princeton Review
• Does not measure intelligence
• Does not verify high school GPA
• Is very poor predictor of college grades

7
Multiple IntelligencesHoward Gardner

• Linguistic
• Musical
• Mathematical
• Spatial
• Kinesthetic
• Inter-personal (relationships with others)
• Intra-personal (knowledge understanding of
  self)
• Intelligences are
• mostly independent of each other
• None is more important, though some are dominant,
  while others are dormant

8
Robert SternbergProfessor of Psychology at Tufts
University

• Argues there are 3 types of intelligence
• Analytic the ability to solve problems using
  academic skills and to complete conventional IQ
  tests
• Creative the ability to deal with novel
  situations and to come up with original solutions
• Practical the ability to deal with problems and
  challenges in everyday life
• Daniel Goleman
• Psychologist and best-selling author
• Argues there is emotional and social
  intelligence, both of which are essential for
  working with others
• Robert Cooper
• Author of The Other 90
• Argues we have a heart brain and a gut brain

9
Three Features of Intelligence

• Diverse expresses itself in numerous ways
• Dynamic growth comes to highly interactive brain
  via seeing new connections between events, ideas,
  and circumstances
• Distinctive unique as a fingerprint
• The right question to ask is How are you
  intelligent?
• Robinson We think about the world in all the
  ways we experience it, including all the
  different ways we use our senses. We think in
  sound, movement, and we think visually.

10
Creativity the process of having original
ideas that have value.

• Putting your imagination to work by making
  something new, coming up with new solutions, or
  identifying new problems or questions.
• Involves a process new ideas, considering
  different possibilities and alternative options
• Tapping into your talents to create something
  original
• Working with media that you love. The media help
  creators think in different ways. This
  illustrates diversity of intelligence and ways of
  thinking.

11
Open Mind

• General Creativity
• Non-linear thinking
• Make fresh connections
• See things in new ways and from different
  perspectives
• Involves intuition, heart and feelings
• Personal Creativity - Being in The Zone or in
  the state of flow
• Can be periods of intense physical effort
• Can be contemplative or meditative
• Very personal and authentic
• Sense of time differs while in the Zone a
  meta-state
• You channel ideas, are in harmony, ignore
  everything else and just concentrate, and the
  sensation is keenly delightful.
• It is an life-giving and powerful state.

12
What puts you in the Zone?

• If left to your own devices (without worrying
  about making a living or what others thought),
  what are you most drawn to doing?
• What activities do you engage in voluntarily?
• What aptitudes do these activities suggest?
• What absorbs you most?
• What sort of questions to you ask, and what type
  of points do they make?
• What do you feel born to do?

13
Circles of Influence

• Tribes of like-minded people working in the same
  field
• Provide mutual inspiration and drive innovation
• Community of shared values
• Communities Differ

14
Re-Wiring of Brain

• Studies of Visual Perception Cultural Sculpting
  of the Brain
• Westerners see Object in the foreground
• East Asians see the background
• Culture May Make an Impression
• http//www.dana.org/news/features/detail.aspx?id8
  008

15
Global Education Reform Efforts

• Economic challenge to educate people to find
  work and create wealth in changing world
• Identity countries want to take advantage of
  globalization, but not lose their identity in the
  process education can help control the rate of
  change

16
Reform Efforts

• 3 processes in education curriculum, pedagogy
  assessment. Reform efforts focuses on curriculum
  assessment.
• Policymakers think the best way to face the
  future is to improve what they did in the past
• Try to control curriculum reinforce the old
  hierarchy of subjects, pushing some disciplines
  and the students that excel at them to the
  margins
• Put greater emphasis on assessment (currently
  standardized, which inhibits innovation and
  creativity for both teachers and students)
• Penalize failing schools
• Standardized tests have gone from tool of
  education to focus of education

17
Transform (not reform) Education

• Focus on Pedagogy
• Key is not to standardize education, but to
  personalize education
• Build achievement on discovering individual
  talents
• Provide environments where kids where want to
  learn and can naturally discover their true
  passions

18
RecommendationsEd is supposed to be the process
that develops all resources

• Eliminate the existing hierarchy of subjects
  treat them equally
• Question the entire idea of subjects focus on
  disciplines and interdisciplinary education
• Personalize the curriculum
• Invest in teachers
• Rethink assessment include projects and
  performances
• Reconsider the Western worldview of making
  distinctions seeing differences, to include
  seeing synergies making connections