Creating Wicked Students

Apr 26

Written By Socrates - Head of School Team

Think you might want to read this book?

Teaching students to think critically is a difficult but necessary feat. We must prepare students for the complex and exciting world they will enter, but to do that, students must be able to assess situations and solve problems in a manner that is often difficult to replicate in the classroom. In Creating Wicked Students, Paul Hanstedt presents methods and strategies for assisting students in solving “wicked problems”– situations where the parameters of the problem and the means available for solving them are changing constantly. To prepare students to apply what they are learning in the classroom to create change in a wickedly-good, but ever-changing and challenging world, pick up a copy of Hanstedt’s book.

What Would Socrates Ask?

What would your students say if you asked them, “What have you learned in this class that matters?"
How can we prepare our students to leave our schools with more than a degree?
How can students relate the course content to themselves and/or their lives?
How can students relate the course content to the real world?
What knowledge, skills, and values will students need to be successful in, and therefore, contribute to the outside world?
What do we want students to be able to do with the content we teach them?
What is the difference between teaching and learning?
What does an authentic assignment look like in my course?

Research

Kole and Healy– students presented with information about famous people they are familiar with were twice as likely to recall that information than students presented with similar information about people they did not know.
Arum and Roksa– students see education as a means of certification, hoops to jump through, not a means of gaining knowledge and ways of thinking that will enrich and advance their lives and work.

Concepts

CONTENT KNOWLEDGE + SKILL KNOWLEDGE + SENSE OF AUTHORITY = THOUGHTFUL CHANGE

Incorporate High Impact Practices (https://www.aacu.org/leap/hips)
- While these are specifically geared toward Higher Ed, most can be adapted for K-12
  - First-Year Seminars and Experiences, Common Intellectual Experiences, Learning Communities, Writing-Intensive Courses, Collaborative Assignments and Projects, Undergraduate Research, Diversity/Global Learning, ePortfolios, Service Learning, Community-Based Learning, Internships, Capstone Courses and Projects
Deep Learning
- Learning that can be recalled beyond the test
- Give students time to reflect on what they have experienced, so they can generate their own questions
- Learning Cycle - Zull - The Art of Changing the Brain

Alignment
- Communicate with colleagues to ensure classes are built on one another and students are able to apply what they have learned
- Provide opportunities for students to apply abstract concepts to the world around them and their own lives
  - Allows students to link course content to preexisting related networks instead of isolated sets of networks only connected to the course
Key Assumptions to Course Development
- Ask students to do the kind of authoritative work we do in our fields
  - Have assignments build on each other, where students have a chance to practice in a low-stakes way before doing a big project
- The degree of difficulty increases as the year increases
- Do not let textbooks and other resources guide course development– pull in resources as applicable
- Pure content coverage will only get our students so far; we need to make space for learning

Quotes from the author

“...when students leave college, we want them to enter the world not as drones participating mindlessly in activities they’ve been assigned, but as thinking, deliberative beings who add something to society.”
“The parameters are changing. The tools and technologies are changing. We live in a wicked world, an unpredictable world. We need wicked graduates with wicked competencies.”
“...if content and skills were enough, education would already have achieved this goal, particularly after the rise in standardized testing that the United States has experienced over the past two decades.”
“...teaching and learning are two entirely different things.”

Implement Tomorrow?

Provide authentic audiences for your assignments
- Consider creating multiple audiences for one assignment
Wicked Assignments
- Oral presentations with a change in audience, Comprehensive Projects, Quantitative Reasoning, Blended Assignments, Videos, and other digital media, Research, Signature Work
Day-to-Day Teaching Methods
- Student-generated Questions, Case Studies, Send a Problem, Two-sided Debates, Mock Trial, Student Conferences (no pre-read paper), Monday Morning Riddles, Jigsaw, Generating Images, Concept Maps, Gallery Walks, Think-Aloud Pair Problem Solving, Generate Rubrics