La Giornata dell’Intelligenza Creativa – Sessione 2, mattino

1. La Giornata dell’Intelligenza Creativa – Sessione 2, mattino L’importanza delle intelligenze creative e pratiche nel percorso di successo degli studenti universitari (come ridurre gli abbandoni, i fallimenti, i ritardi)

2. The Challenge • Accepting students from all backgrounds while increasing retention and graduation rates

3. Suggested Solution Helping all students succeed, by • Identifying potential at admissions • Teaching to students’ strengths & weaknesses • Monitoring student progress and providing on-time support as needed

4. A framework for developing solutions Robert J. Sternberg’s Theory of Successful Intelligence: Students are SUCCESSFULLY INTELLIGENT, when they have the abilities to succeed in life by: 1. Recognizing and capitalizing on strengths; 2. Recognizing and correcting or compensating for weaknesses.

5. Capitalization and compensation enable people to balance: • Adaptation to existing environments; • Shaping environments to improve them; • Selecting new environments. Via: • Analytical abilities • Creative abilities • Practical abilities

6. Analytical intelligence . . . . . . is evoked when we • analyze • compare and contrast • evaluate • explain • judge • critique

7. Creative intelligence . . . . . . is evoked when we: • create • design • invent • imagine • suppose

8. Practical intelligence . . . . . . is involved when we: • Use • Apply • Implement • Employ • Contextualize

9. Suggested solution • Helping all students by • Identifying potential at admissions • Teaching to students’ strengths & weaknesses • Monitoring student progress and providing on-time support as needed

10. 1. Identifying potential in the U.S Going beyond analytical measures such as GPA or SAT scores • Example A of small revision to the admissions process: Tufts University’s Kaleidoscope project • Example B of a moderate enhancement: New England Prep School Scholarship program • Example C of an extensive change: Project Rainbow

11. Example A: Kaleidoscope • [Question allowing for analytical skills] In The Happy Life, Charles Eliot called books "the quietest and most constant of friends…the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers." What work of fiction or non-fiction changed the way you live or the way you see the world? Why? • [Question allowing for practical skills] Describe a moment in which you took a risk and achieved an unexpected goal. How did you persuade others to follow your lead? You may reflect on examples from your academic, extracurricular or athletic experiences.

12. Kaleidoscope • [Question allowing for creativity] Use an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper to create something.  You can blueprint your future home, create a new product, draw a cartoon strip, design a costume or a theatrical set, compose a score or do something entirely different.  Let your imagination wander. 

13. Example B: Prep School Classes of Attributes Selected • Soft-Side Variables • (Self-Reported) Character, Values, Motivation • Hard-Side Variables • Academic Intelligence • Practical Intelligence

14. Soft-Side Instruments: Student Self-Report • Type of tasks preferred (too hard, hard, not too hard, easy) • Self-awareness • Self-confidence • Commitment to learning and achievement • Self-efficacy • Locus of Control • Resilience (semi-structured interview)

15. Student Self-Report: Example Item You think that if you put enough hard work into it, you will do well in any academic subject._____ Strongly Agree_1 Agree_2 Mostly Agree_3 Neither Agree nor Disagree_4 Mostly Disagree_5 Disagree_6 Strongly Disagree_7

16. Hard-Side Instruments • Tacit Knowledge Questionnaire (known as School-Life Questionnaire) Constructed on the basis of • Interviews with alumni • Interviews with current students • Conversations with teachers

17. School-Life Questionnaire 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Not a very good Average A very good choice choice In day schools you rarely see your teachers outside of class. Some of them might be engaged in sports or other extra-curricular activities, but mostly you only see them in school-related circumstances. At boarding school the situation is quite different, because many teachers live on campus and you get to see them outside the classroom a lot.

18. Cont. Given this situation, rate the quality of the following behavior choices: ____ (a) Always greet teachers and smile, but avoid seeing them outside of class. ____ (b) Take advantage of this situation to talk to teachers about your school-related problems. ____ (c) Wait and see if teachers approach you, and if so, what kinds of things they talk to you about. ____ (d) Talk to your teachers but avoid discussing your problems as this might give them a negative impression of you. ____ (e) Try to be sensitive and make a distinction between situations when teachers are available and unavailable to you. ____ (f) Always try to be noticed—the more teachers talk to you, the better your grades will be. ____ (g) Always ask whether it is a good time or not to discuss your problems with teachers.

19. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Not a very good Average A very good choice choice You are taking a math class that gives you a lot of trouble. On the first two tests you did poorly, and for tomorrow you have a homework problem that you are not quite sure how to solve.

20. Cont. Given this situation, rate the quality of the following behavior choices: ____ (a) Try to find a solution, or at least some explanation of how to arrive at a solution, in the book . ____ (b) Give it a try; if you can’t solve the problem you’ll just have to tell the teacher you didn’t understand it. ____ (c) Ask some of your classmates if they’ve found the solution, telling them you want to compare it with yours’ (although you don’t actually have one). ____ (d) Try hard, and if it doesn’t work, give up on it; you can always pretend you had forgotten you had homework. ____ (e) Suggest to some of your classmates that you study together. ____ (f) Go to see the one student in the class who you know is really smart and ask him for help. ____ (g) Try hard, take a lot of notes, then come to the teacher before class and tell her/him that you tried and failed.

21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Not a very good Average A very good choice choice Students who are used to living at home and going to school nearby need to adjust to being away from home when they go to boarding school. All students miss home at times. A few students become very homesick. Knowing that it is sometimes difficult to be away from family and friends, imagine that you are in the situation of having just started boarding school.

22. Cont. Given this situation, rate the quality of the following behavior choices: ____ (a) Write, e-mail, and call your friends and family as often as possible. ____ (b) Ask your friends and family to come to visit you so that you can show them your new surroundings. ____ (c) Go home to visit your friends and family whenever possible. ____ (d) Try to make new friends and not think too much about home. ____ (e) Force yourself not to call or write your friends and family too often. ____ (f) Tell your parents how difficult a time you are having and discuss the possibility of going back to your hometown school.

23. Predicting GPA: Hierarchical/Stepwise Regression

24. What matters? • Very high motivation to achieve (internal locus of control) • Sensible self-confidence • “Expert” knowledge of the school environment

25. Example C: Rainbow Analytical • multiple choice items Practical • multiple choice items • performance tasks (tacit knowledge inventories) Creative • multiple choice items • performance tasks

26. Vignette Sample ItemCollege Life Tacit-Knowledge Inventory 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Not at all Neither Extremely Characteristic Characteristic nor Characteristic Uncharacteristic You are enrolled in a large introductory lecture course. Requirements consist of three term-time exams and a final. Please indicate how characteristic it is of your behavior to spend time doing the following, if your goal is getting an A in the course. ___Attending class regularly. ___Attending optional weekly review sessions, if there are any, with the T.A. ___Reading assigned text chapters thoroughly. ___Taking comprehensive class notes. ___Speaking with the Professor after class and during office hours. ___Talking to students who took the course last year. ___Studying regularly instead of cramming in the night before exams. ___Doing the extra credit or optional reading assignments. ___Skimming the required reading in the morning before class.

27. Vignette Sample ItemGeneral Workplace Tacit-Knowledge Inventory 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Extremely Very Somewhat Neither Bad Somewhat Very Extremely Bad Bad Bad Nor Good Good Good Good You’ve been assigned to work on a project for a day with a fellow employee whom you really dislike. He is rude, lazy, and rarely does a proper job. What would be the best thing for you to do? ___Tell the worker that you think he is worthless. ___Warn the worker that, if he is not “on his toes” today, you will complain to the supervisor. ___Avoid all conversation and eye contact with the other worker. ___Be polite to the other worker and try to maintain as business-like a manner as possible so that hopefully he will follow your example for the day. ___Tell your supervisor that you refuse to work with this man. ___The project is going to be impossible to accomplish with this worker, so you may as well not even try--you can always blame your bad work partner. ___See if you can convince one of your friends to take your place and work with this employee. ___Demand a raise from your supervisor; you should not have to tolerate these conditions.

28. Everyday Situational Judgment - Movies • Examinees see seven digitized movies depicting various real-life situations that college students confront or may confront. • Show a sample clip: “Which math?”

29. Cont. • What is the most effective solution to this situation in terms of James’ achieving academic success? • __1) Take the easy class and sit in on the difficult one. • __2) Take the easy one. • __3) Take the more challenging class. • __4) Take the easy class and ask his friend the physics major to make the material more interesting for him. • __5) Take the challenging class and have his friend the physics major help him with his homework.

30. Creative Performance tasks • Written stories (2) • Oral stories (2) • Cartoon captions (3)

31. Written Stories SHORT STORY TASK: TITLES • “A Fifth Chance” • “2983” • “Beyond the Edge” • “The Octopus’s Sneakers” • “It’s Moving Backwards” • “Not Enough Time”

32. Oral Stories

33. Cartoon Titles _______________________________________________________________________

34. Summary • SAT alone explains about 9.8% of GPA variance • New measures alone explain about 16.3% of GPA variance • And, new measures explain about 8.6% of GPA variance beyond SAT alone, whereas SAT explains about 0.7% of GPA beyond new measures

35. Suggested Solution Helping all students by: • Identifying potential at admissions • Teaching to students’ strengths & weaknesses • Monitoring student progress and providing on-time support as needed

36. 2. Teaching to ALL students

37. Teaching to MEMORY skills • RECALL who did certain things (e.g., proposed a theory), • RETELL what things they did (e.g., the nature of the theory), • RECITE how certain things are done (e.g., computing a standard deviation), • LIST when certain things are done (e.g., when squaring of terms is done in a formula), etc.

38. Teaching to ANALYTICAL skills • ANALYZE(a literary plot, a theory in the sciences, a mathematical problem) • COMPARE AND CONTRAST(two characters in a novel, two systems of government, the styles of two artists) • EVALUATE(a poem, a cultural custom, a strategy in tennis) • EXPLAIN(the use of grammar in a sentence, your interpretation of an historical event, the solution to a scientific problem)

39. A High School Psychology Example You have read about two alternative theories of sleep: the restorative theory of sleep and an evolutionary theory of sleep, sometimes referred to as the “preservation and protection” theory. Briefly describe and compare and contrast these two theories. State what you see as the advantages and disadvantages of the evolutionary theory compared to the restorative theory.

40. Exercise: • Work in groups of 2 or 3 and come up with an example of an analytical activity that you do with your students. Model the activity for the rest of the group, as if they were the students.

41. Teaching to PRACTICAL skills • USE(a lesson that a literary character learned in your life, a mathematical lesson in the supermarket, a lesson learned on the playing field in everyday life) • APPLY(what you learned in a foreign-language class to an interaction with a foreigner, a lesson from history to the present, a scientific principle to everyday life)

42. A High School Math Example • Think of something you do every day, and have been doing every day for the most part of your life. It can be any action, like brushing your teeth, smiling to greet friends, or listening to CDs. Calculate how many times a day you perform this action, then estimate how many times you do it in a month, then in a year, and finally how many times you are likely to have done it in your life. Express these results using the scientific notations you have learned in this section.

43. Exercise • Work in groups of 2 or 3 and come up with an example of a practical activity that you do with your students. Model the activity for the rest of the group, as if they were the students.

44. Teaching to CREATIVE skills • CREATE(a poem, a sculpture, a new game) • DESIGN(a new system of government for the classroom, a scientific investigation, a comfortable home) • IMAGINE(what life would be like in another country, what it would be like to be president of a country, how bees communicate to each other) • SUPPOSE(worldwide temperatures increased 5 degrees on average…, people were paid to inform on neighbors who do not support the political party in power…, the ozone layer were completely depleted)

45. A High School Physics Example [Unit on vectors using airplane data] • Imagine that the earth rotated in the opposite direction, or at a different rate. How would this affect your plane’s arrival time?

46. Exercise: • Work in groups of 2 or 3 and come up with an example of a creative activity that you do with your students. Model the activity for the rest of the group, as if they were the students.

47. Assess what you teach • Align teaching and assessment • Examples from AP studies showing decreased differences between ethnic groups with practical and creative assessment items vs. analytical and memory items

48. Results of the AP studies

49. Suggested Solution Helping all students, including first-generation, low-income students, succeed, by: • Identifying potential at admissions • Teaching to students’ strengths & weaknesses • Monitoring student progress and providing on-time support as needed

50. Assessing and tracking students • Admissions • Academic programming: Placement / diagnostic exams, Focus groups, Student Academic Self Assessment, Other Surveys, Advising, Mentoring, Tutoring • Graduation • Alumni: Survey on strengths and weaknesses