Maiken's inquiry

Design Projects

approaches +ideas for teachers

A resource to be used with and for teachers of Design and Visual Communication in Aotearoa New ZealandAs partial fulfilment of the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Programme for International Teachers requirementsBy Maiken Calkoen

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. Video explaining the significance and meaning of this piece of architecture.

Inquiry Project:Strategies for facilitating divergent design thinking in students while engaged in design practice and individual project work

Architect Zaha Hadid's building 520W 28th Street and the concepts driving the architecture

Biography My name is Maiken Calkoen, I am from Hastings, a small city on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. My father immigrated to New Zealand from the Netherlands as a 6 year old, and my mother is a 2nd generation “kiwi”. Growing up I always knew that teaching was an option. My mother was a primary school teacher, and there are a lot of other teachers in my family. However, as a very creative kid and teenager I wanted to do something related to design so I completed my five year architecture degree. During my studies and for two years afterwards I did part time work tutoring first year university students in drawing, visual communication and architectural design. I loved working with these students to help them to succeed with the challenging course material. For another four or five years I did a lot of different work, architectural and otherwise, in New Zealand, The Netherlands, Ireland and Scotland, and was struggling to find the kind of work that I had thought I had wanted. At 28 years old I returned home to my parents’ house in New Zealand, without a plan. However, I reflected on the wonderful experiences I had tutoring, and within a month I had enrolled to do the one year secondary school teaching course, training to be a Design and Visual Communication (DVC) teacher. I have now been teaching for almost 17 years, at three different schools and I still really enjoy the interactions with the students, seeing that spark of an idea, and giving them the tools and confidence to see creative ideas through. The school I teach at is also my old high school. Some of my colleagues are my old teachers, and many of the students have parents that went to school with me! This is enjoyable as I really feel like part of the community and have that sense of belonging. I also enjoy being an advocate for my home town and have done a photographic exhibition of Hastings, as well as paintings of the surrounding area. However, as I am lucky enough to have travelled and lived in other places too, I like to bring this experience back to my students so that they can also see how opportunities abound and that they can be brave and look beyond the familiarity of home in their futures. The challenge of teaching at my school is similar to how most people feel which is that the pandemic has had a major impact on the attendance and motivation of the students. This is a real concern, coupled with some major educational reforms that are happening in New Zealand at the moment, it is particularly challenging, and I feel so stretched in multiple directions. I have been trying my hardest to prioritise the students and their needs, but as a Head of Faculty, leading a team of teachers, it has been hard to do this. The goal posts have been shifting constantly and everything is changing. This has made things super tiring and it has been difficult to maintain my usual passion for teaching. I applied for the Fulbright DAI program as it sounded like an amazing opportunity to re-set and refresh.

My "Why" The thing that really makes me feel happy when teaching is not when students get good grades, nor, when certain academic milestones are reached, instead, I am most happy when a student has an idea, and they feel confident enough to be able to explore that idea. Students might have some strange or unusual brainwave or response to a design context and ask me “can I do this?” or “is this idea ok for this project?” or “am I allowed to do this?”. In the moments when I can respond with “yes, that’s a great approach” or, “yes, why not?” and the students faces light up, I am happy. The reason for this is that I know they feel comfortable enough to follow their own creativity, ideas and interests, and I am pleased to be able to offer a course than can do that.

Executive Summary Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand in the next five years will have to upend their teaching programmes due to the changes coming to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) assessment model. The resulting action of my inquiry and experience will be to support others in re-designing their programmes and implementing new ways of teaching creativity. My audience for this project will be other Design and Visual Communication (DVC) teachers in New Zealand who are needing to implement culturally responsive pedagogy while engaged in teaching the design process. I will work alongside teachers to encourage them to see this assessment reform as a chance to make positive change for their students and a time to refresh and refine teaching programmes. I will do this work by providing learning activities that support the intent of the new achievement standards and sharing resources which assist in this transition. My method will be

• To identify key points within the big ideas and significant learning outlined in the New DVC Learning Matrix
• To inquire into other frameworks for learning about creativity, such as Studio Thinking
• To draw upon the other frameworks and find connections with our learning matrix/new achievement standards
• To come up with a range of DVC-specific supporting resources. These resources will include strategies using both digital technology and hands-on experiences, tools, and activities which acknowledge a range of learning styles, preferences, prior learning and familiar/unfamiliar techniques and contexts.

The goal of this project is to create a professional development workshop and supporting take-away resources which will be available on our nationwide teachers association website, as well as being a workshop as part of our next bi-annual conference. Once the workshop is complete, teachers should know and understand that it is important to allow students to have time to explore and experiment with ideas. Students need to feel safe and comfortable with incorporating their own interests and culture into the learning context. Students also need to understand that projects can evolve and develop organically while being guided by the teacher to ensure that convergent thinking is taking place. In so doing, students can engage in and come up with a rich and thoughtful design outcome. Teachers should then be more confident to support a range of learners in their diverse project work while also remaining open minded and flexible to a range of potential contexts for project work. Teachers’ opinions about the topic should be that they can see the benefit to all learners when diverse contexts and previously untried ideas are attempted in their classrooms.

Why Is This Project Presented The Way It Is? This project, like the design process, is non-linear yet interconnected, with an open-ended quality. It is intended to be interacted with in a range of ways as it expresses exploration, makes connections and goes off on tangents, much like how design thinking can and does. It includes my own images; either photographs I have taken or paintings I have done while in the USA. Most pages have a video or link that give context to these images and are mainly concerned with the process of designing or conceptual thinking. It reflects the rich array of influences that I have been exposed to during this time, as well as areas of personal interest that I have been able to pursue while here. I hope that this is just the start of the project, as I plan to build upon it once I return to Aotearoa New Zealand and continue to add thoughts, connections, resources and examples.

Acknowledgements Indiana University of Pennsylvania Fulbright New Zealand IREX Indiana University of Pennsylvania Office of International Education Dr. Michele Petrucci: Associate Vice President: Office of International Education Dr. Sue Rieg: Interim Dean: College of Education and Communications Dr. Marissa McClure Sweeny: Faculty Advisor IUP Mr. Michael Rieg: Field Experience Coordinator Mrs. Joy Dress: Partner Teacher Indiana High School Mrs. Jennie Canning: Partner teacher Brashear High School Dr. Stephan Schaffrath: Fulbright Seminar Instructor Ms. Atia Rasul: Fulbright Seminar Assistant Instructor Dr. Jacqueline McGinty: Technology Workshop Instructor Mr. Roger Briscoe: Technology Workshop Assistant Instructor Ms. Farzi Jahangiri: Fulbright Program Assistant Dr. Rachel Schiera: Editor

Precedents and sources of note from time in the USA

Oil painting of Indiana, Pennsylvania, part of the township on the edge of campus of IUP

Key quotes and ideas from Rewiring Education: Their (the teacher’s) role must be to help students recognise their natural talents and move from being a conveyer of information to a facilitator of learning. Instead of relying on traditional teacher functions the facilitator relies on things like asking open-ended questions, guiding students through open-ended activities, offering individualized feedback, ensuring that lessons are relevant and engaging, offering real-world and hypothetical examples, fostering collaboration and creativity, modelling the act of problem solving, and getting students actively involved in their own learning. - page 165 The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge. – page 155 If schools were more like makerspaces than memorization races – in other words, relevant, creative, challenging and collaborative – our kids would have a much better chance of succeeding. – page 136 On challenge-based learning: Essential Questions trigger various investigations by the students which include working alone and in teams, to plan, research, interview, take field trips, and more, in an effort to find the answers... …. The action plan comes as CBL’s (Challenge based learning) third phase where students start acting on their findings. They use elements of the design cycle (prototype, test, and refine) to come up with evidence-based solutions, which are then implemented either within the school, the broader community, or somewhere else in the world entirely through online tools. – page 109 We need to meet them where they are, engage them for who they are, and reject the myth of there being only one right way to succeed. – page 94 For teachers, the task is to work with students to take multidisciplinary standards-based content, connect it to what is happening in the world today, and translate it into an experience in which students make a difference in their community. - page 75 Rewiring education ultimately means changing the way we teach the things we want today’s students to learn. It should no longer be about distributing content and memorising meaningless facts, but about teaching kids to combine new understandings of these facts with critical and creative thinking skills that ultimately lead them to discover, understand and create new things. – page 64

Items referenced on this page are mainly books about design education and education in general which I have looked into while in the USA

Frameworks and initiatives of note from time in the USA

Pittsburgh: A context for innovation and education

The Lake Louise Mountain Resort is also located near the village. Lake Louise is one of the most visited lakes in the world and is framed to the southwest by the Mount Victoria Glacier.

Items referenced on this page are either frameworks or initiatives that I have looked into while in the USA. Many are here as they warrant a return visit and I see them as helpful and informative references for the design education interests I have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMCO_NTcRxI

Aotearoa New Zealand frameworks + new curriculum / assessment resources

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Oil painting of part of Aotearoa New Zealand as viewed from above

Key competencies are the capabilities people have, and need to develop, to live and learn today and in the future. The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies:

• Thinking
• Relating to others
• Using language, symbols, and texts
• Managing self
• Participating and contributing

Currently Aotearoa New Zealand Secondary Education is in a state of transformation. The links on this page are reference points for all of this change and some of the thinking behind it.

Creativity,analysis and interpretation of divergent thinking

Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel: concept and construction

Personal Reflection/Interpretation This inquiry project has been an exercise in divergence in that I have explored many different pathways, have had multiple varied ideas, and have considered a range of perspectives. After a very busy few months experiencing many educational settings, educational ideas, excursions, and cultural aspects of the USA I have not easily come to specific conclusions. Instead, I have had many moments in which my personal perspective and ideas about education have been reinforced. This has happened by having conversations and making observations that have been affirming and positive, as well as noticing details and observing some general educational practices that have contrasted with some of my fundamental beliefs about how education can be and should be. Therefore, it has been challenging to channel everything into a conclusive and definitive outcome. With this in mind, the following pages of the inquiry project are needing to be viewed as fluid, works in progress and evolving! My plan is to set out an outline of some key ideas, focusses and approaches, without having definitive, rounded-off strategies. I feel like I need to return to my own context in Aotearoa New Zealand and to try things out in the context in which they were intended. This means that what comes next in this project is a collection of starting points, questions and considerations that can be posed to teachers, with the intention that further exploration, discussion and trials will lead to a growing resource that can continue to be a living document.

Keywords For Divergent Design Thinking Play Stretch Explore Challenge Collaborate Discover Envision Observe Interact Express Create Experiment Extend Ideate Integrate Try different ways

Strategies for teachers for initiating project work with students

Summit One Vandebilt: Immersive experience within specific spatial design.

Conference 2024 padlet resource Community as starting point The definition of a community can expand and contract depending on context. For example, a spatial design project can be considered for a community as small as a classroom, a small business, or a particular whanau (family). It can encapsulate more people or interest groups by being a whole school, a suburb, a group of end-users, or even more by being a city or region. As a teacher you can facilitate the focus of a project by gathering resources that are from a particular community (for example the immediate suburb or town that the students in the school are part of). This can include culturally significant landmarks, geographical features and sites of prominence for tangata whenua, historical references, current events, relevant issues, actual initiatives that are already in existence, in the form of videos, imagery, etc. So, rather than giving the students a blank canvas, examples of the type of resources they can find themselves, with supporting explanation, can help them to know what sort of "research" they can do in order to define a project focus. Questions that explore potential contexts which draw upon specificities within communities.

• What aspects within a community need revitalising?
• What areas or sites within a community could benefit from a built intervention?
• What stories or culturally significant aspects of the community can be commemorated or celebrated?
• What environmental initiatives or issues need to become elevated or supported through a built intervention/initiative?
• What issues for youth in this community need to be supported by a design intervention?
• What sort of facility could better support community involvement and participation?

Identity As Starting Point For students, their own identities, and the commonalities and differences they have with their peers and others are important and can be drawn upon for engaging and meaningful projects. As a teacher, identify and share elements of your own identity and what is important to you. This could include any of the following themes or topics or combinations:

• Your creative journey
• Your whakapapa (genealogy) through imagery
• Whanau (family stories, traditions, history, connections etc)
• Connections between you and a particular topic (eg: nature, the environment, etc)

Once you have shared this with your students, ask them to create something that expresses their own experiences and connections. This will allow for a dialogue and starting point for a context for design. Examples of this may include:

• The design of a space that house whatever creative pursuit is identified by the student
• A space that is influenced by the student's whakapapa.

Questioning To Trigger Exploration Questions can be posed to students which are outside of a student's current knowledge, identity or community. Instead, questions that are thought provoking and trigger a sense of curiosity or allow for individual exploration, will help initiation of individual projects. These questions can be context specific and allow for students to have the confidence to explore and find a "hook" or area of interest within a scenario. If each student get to a point where they are able to answer the question of "why is their potential project interesting / important / necessary / motivating?" then they will have more buy-in and direction for further exploration.

The intention of this page Before projects begin, a clear goal needs to be defined by the teacher in terms of what they want the students to learn. There must be some sort of overarching context identified so that any divergent thinking is done for a reason and is able to be supported by a structure. Then individual student interests and exploration can happen / is encouraged which then has enough open ended possibilities.

Ideas / strategies for facilitating exploration / divergent thinking

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Gustav Klimt : Gold in Motion. Immersive exhibition, NYC.

Project ideas which allow for choice and exploration: Furnitecture Level 1 DVC 2024 - work in progress! https://dvckaramu.weebly.com/11-dvc.html Revitalise Hastings (insert own location here) https://dvckaramu.weebly.com/12-dvc.html Level 3 DVC 2024 see teacher resource page: https://dvckaramu.weebly.com/teaching-resources.html

Resource experiences Hands-on and digital strategies: Trace Draw Photograph Draw over Model 3-D exploration Collage Photograph Photoshop SketchUp Visual communication strategies: Tesselate: repeat, pattern... Inversion: swap, flip, mirror, upside down... Deconstruction: pull apart... Translation: move, shift, transfere... Exaggeration: stretch, squeeze, compact, push-pull... Recombination: take elements, put with others... Abstract: condense, remove, shorten... Rotate: look at from a different point of view... Ask: What would happen if? link to teaching resources page.

The intention is to continue to add to this page once back in New Zealand. The inquiry continues!

Next steps for teachers + approaches to the long-game of sustaining project work

Santiago Calatrava's Oculus building: Explanation of the architect's intention for the user

Mindset For Changes Of Mind And Tangents In Project Work These next steps will be added to once back in New Zealand

Continued Divergent Strategies These next steps will be added to once back in New Zealand

Eventual Convergence These next steps will be added to once back in New Zealand

The intention is to continue to add to this page once back in New Zealand. The inquiry continues!