He responded with wonderment and awe. When we respond to something with wonderment and awe, it is because we recognise the things that make it special. This response is innate. But what we can get better at is searching for what causes us to feel wonderment and awe.
Most importantly, we can teach our students how to get better at this. Luke McKenna reminded me how important it is to experience wonderment and awe. We miss the point if we simply expose students to increasingly amazing things — the extraordinary video we found on YouTube, the bigger the explosion, the larger event.
We may elicit the response of wonderment but at the expense of students learning how to seek it and find it themselves. If we want our students to experience wonderment and awe, we must help them understand what is normal — and teach them how to search for the exceptional so they can discover and respond with wonderment and awe. James Anderson is a speaker, author and educator who is passionate about helping fellow educators develop students as better learners.
He puts the growth back into Growth Mindset. And through creating and describing the Mindset Continuum, he provides the cornerstone for effective Growth Mindset interventions. James is a Certified Speaking Professional and speaks regularly at conferences around the world. Are you enjoying my blog? Sign up for my newslette r. Click on the links below for more details on my workshops, including locations and dates. The Growth Mindset Toolkit workshop.
The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. With it, there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis.
Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead t o something else. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.
Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours. No other species wonders about the meaning of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves.
We travel far to see the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary mountains, great waterfalls, and galleries of art.
It is intuitive, holistic, and conceptual. Since we often need to solve problems with incomplete information, we need the capacity to perceive general patterns and jump across gaps of incomplete knowledge or when some of the pieces are missing. These activities require attention to detail, precision, and orderly progressions.
Flexible thinkers display confidence in their intuition. They tolerate confusion and ambiguity up to a point, and are willing to let go of a problem, trusting their subconscious to continue creative and productive work on it. Flexibility is the cradle of humor, creativity, and repertoire. It is our ability to plan a strategy for producing what information is needed, to be conscious of our own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of our own thinking.
Probably the major components of metacognition are developing a plan of action, maintaining that plan in mind over a period of time, then reflecting back on and evaluating the plan upon its completion.
Planning a strategy before embarking on a course of action assists us in keeping track of the steps in the sequence for the duration of the activity. It facilitates making temporal and comparative judgments, assessing the readiness for more or different activities, and monitoring our interpretations, perceptions, decisions, and behaviors. It involves being conscious of the need for midcourse correction if the plan is not meeting expectations, reflecting on the plan upon completion of the implementation for the purpose of self-evaluation, and editing mental pictures for improved performance.
Embodied in the stamina, grace, and elegance of a ballerina or a shoemaker is the desire for craftsmanship, mastery, flawlessness, and economy of energy to produce exceptional results.
People who value these qualities take time to check over their products. They review the rules by which they are to abide; they review the models and visions they are to follow; and they review the criteria they are to employ and confirm that their finished product matches the criteria exactly. For some people, craftsmanship requires continuous reworking. Mario Cuomo, a great speechwriter and politician, once said that his speeches were never done — it was only a deadline that made him stop working on them!
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances. One of the distinguishing characteristics between humans and other forms of life is our inclination and ability to find problems to solve.
Effective questioners are inclined to ask a range of questions. Intelligent human beings learn from experience. When confronted with a new and perplexing problem, they will often draw forth experience from their past. Furthermore, they are able to abstract meaning from one experience, carry it forth, and apply it in a new and novel situation.
I have to translate my thoughts in a language that does not run evenly with them. Enriching the complexity and specificity of language simultaneously produces effective thinking.
Language and thinking are closely entwined. Like two sides of a coin, they are inseparable. Fuzzy language is a reflection of fuzzy thinking. Intelligent people strive to communicate accurately in both written and oral form, taking care to use precise language, defining terms, correct names, and universal labels and analogies. They strive to avoid overgeneralizations, deletions, and distortions. Instead, they support their statements with explanations, comparisons, quantification, and evidence.
The brain is the ultimate reductionist. It reduces the world to its elementary parts: photons of light, molecules of smell, sound waves, vibrations of touch — which send electrochemical signals to individual brain cells that store information about lines, movements, colors, smells, and other sensory inputs.
Intelligent people know that all information gets into the brain through the sensory pathways: gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, visual, Most linguistic, cultural, and physical learning is derived from the environment by observing or taking in through the senses.
To know a wine it must be drunk; to know a role it must be acted; to know a game it must be played; to know a dance it must be moved; to know a goal it must be envisioned. Those whose sensory pathways are open, alert, and acute absorb more information from the environment than those whose pathways are withered, immune, and oblivious to sensory stimuli.
Furthermore, we are learning more about the impact of arts and music on improved mental functioning. Forming mental images is important in mathematics and engineering; listening to classical music seems to improve spatial reasoning. Social scientists solve problems through scenarios and roleplaying; scientists build models; engineers use cad-cam; mechanics learn through hands-on experimentation; artists experiment with colors and textures; musicians learn by producing combinations of instrumental and vocal music.
The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination. All humans have the capacity to generate novel, original, clever, or ingenious products, solutions, and techniques—if that capacity is developed.
Creative individuals try to conceive problem solutions differently, examining alternative possibilities from many angles. They tend to project themselves into different roles using analogies, starting with a vision and working backward, imagining they are the objects being considered. Creative people take risks and frequently push the boundaries of their perceived limits. They are intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated, working on the task because of the aesthetic challenge rather than the material rewards.
Creative people are open to criticism. They hold up their products for others to judge and seek feedback in an ever-increasing effort to refine their technique. They enjoy figuring things out by themselves and continue to learn throughout their lifetimes.
They see the congruity and intricacies in the derivation of a mathematical formula, recognize the orderliness and adroitness of a chemical change, and commune with the serenity of a distant constellation. Flexible people seem to have an almost uncontrollable urge to go beyond established limits.
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