Producing Integrative

Thinkers

A professional development for educators

Purpose
The purpose of this presentations is to provide education
administration techniques to train intuition; methods to improve
analytical thinking with collaboration, and strategies to enhance
creativity in others.

After review of the available resources from this presentations, it will

serve great utility and purpose for an employer to take the strategies
and exercises provided to best develop the strategy of opposable
minds in others.

Developing independent thinking, group collaboration, and sharing

creative results with co-workers will improve the logical approach to
education.
Table of Contents

Solution Finding Finding Alternative Solutions

Bias Prevention Model Collaborative Project

Practice with Feedback Hands on Project

Case Based Learning Formative/Summative Assessment
Eliciting Audience Response
Solution Finding

In education, we work with people constantly. (Students, parents, staff and administration.)

There are no problems in a school setting for a person is not a problem. Instead, we are interested in finding solutions.

First, we need to identify the type of situation where a solution to improve is required. Which category it falls into will determine
the next steps. Here is the scale we use in hierarchy of importance to be addressed:

- Is this a situation that reflects legally protecting students and information?

- Is this a situation that references morally handling interpersonal conflict?

- Is this a situation that can be broken down objectively to compare the best solution?

- Is this a situation that references facts or opinions?

Bias Prevention Model

BLINDING- Blind stereotypes, past experience, and idiosyncratic associations whenever possible

CHECKLISTS- Be straightforward, follow up with everyone needed, keep all informed, find what is most relevant, be objective.

ALGORITHMS- Try to remove the personal context, treat the behavior with a consistent consequence

(Soll, Milkman, & Payne, 2015), (Bacigalupe, 2002)

When we assign too much or too little significance to the information we have, were bound to go off course in our decision
making. (Soll, Milkman, & Payne, 2015) Administration needs to instruct educators to work on preventing bias from controlling
their decision making in the classroom.
Practice with Feedback

Administration will facilitate an activity for educators where the goal is to have teachers take on different roles in solution finding.
TheFish Bowl technique consists of a small circle of group members within a larger circle. Members of the inner circle practice
by interacting in some way (problem solving, discussing, teaching) while the outer circle observes them and provides feedback.
(Tiberius, 2001) Administration needs to instruct educators to work on looking at problem solving from multiple perspectives.
Being able to put yourself outside a situation and provide feedback for how solution finding can be improved will serve as
beneficial to the group.

Administration will facilitate an activity for educators where the goal is to share information in paired Interviewing. This strategy
consists of a pair of learners who interview one another. Learners who think that they understand something after reading about it
find that the task of being able to explain their understanding to someone else in answer to a question requires a much deeper
level of understanding and integration of the material. (Millis, 1995) Administration needs to instruct educators to work on being
able to explain their thinking to another person. One of the highest orders of understanding would be able to articulate ones
stance on a situation to another person in detail.
Case Based Learning

Administration will facilitate an activity for educators where the goal is to provide a dramatic enactment. A brief dramatic
presentation reveals not only the problem but its context as well. This method can be used spontaneously to act out a situation or
test a solution proposed by the group. When it is used in this way it is usually called role-play. (Tiberius, Silver, Fleming,
Hoffman & Cappe, 1990) Administration needs to instruct educators to learn from previous experiences that have required
analytical problem solving in a school setting. Administration can provide a detailed narrative of prior experiences and how the
solution finding process took place.
Eliciting Audience Response

Administration will facilitate an activity for educators where the goal is to get responses from the teachers.. Card-Sorting is a
game where each participant has in front of him or her, a pile of twenty to thirty cards that he or she must sort into four to six
categories. Each card has a characteristic written on it that more accurately describes one of the categories than the others.
(Silver & Herman, 1997) Administration needs to instruct educators to work on how to logically sort and compartmentalize
information into groups. The compartmentalization of information will assist teachers in articulating the differences in material.
Finding Alternative Solutions

Opposable Minds is a concept where people try to solve the same situation with different methods. The goal is to identify pitfalls
and fallacies in each method and to collaborate with one another to have a well-rounded approach to problem solving.
Integrative solutions emerge from exploring the tension between opposing ideas. (Avishai, 2013) Administration needs to
instruct educators to work on creative solution finding by creating opportunities to use Opposable Minds when appropriate.

Be bold. Create unique avenues that open up communications with your competitors. Talk to others who know your competitors
extremely welland talk to key customers, both current customers and former customers that youve lost to competitors.
(American Management Association, 2010) This idea can be extrapolated to the classroom, where students, parent,
administrators, etc. are not a teacherscompetitor, they are the people that we are working with. And seeing things from their
perspective will help understand the opposition even more so and can be beneficial in finding a solution.
Collaborative Project

Anatomy of intuition is the ... stored capacity for intuitive intelligence. (Cappon, 1994). Administration needs to instruct educators
to work on improving the storage space and the knowledge of intuitive intelligence.

Administration needs to instruct educators to work on improving storage space by being made aware of the different models of
problem solving. ...Adaptive Intelligence - a form of intelligence that transcends disciplinary boundaries and represents the
expertise of a solver of real-world problems. It is my hope that its components can serve as a blueprint for the development of a
new approach to education. Moldoveanu, 2011) Teaching Adaptive intelligence will also train intuitive thinking inherently. The
collaborative project will include having teachers research one of Moldoveanus different models in groups and agree on a
situation where it would be appropriately applied.
Formative & Summative Assessment

Formative- Administration will informally check in with educators throughout the activities to gauge effective strategies, and room
for improvement.

Summative- Administration will ask questions via google forms before and after attending the different training sessions.
Information will be compared and shared with administration as evidenced based learning. Questions asked may include:

-Identify your biases in the classroom.

-Identify your skills in the classroom you consider yourself to be an expert in.
-Do you have intuitive problem solving skills? Provide a definition.

Responses after the training would hopefully have a longer list of identified biases, strengths, and be able to articulate what
intuitive problem solving skills in an operational definition.
References
American Management Association (2010). The power of counter-intuitive thinking. Retrieved from
http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/The-Power-of-Counter-Intuitive-Thinking.aspx

Avishai. E. (2013). Cultivating an opposable mind: A case study in integrative thinking. Education Canada, 53(5), 15-20.

Bacigalupe, G. (2002). Inviting intuitive understandings in teaching and professional practices: Is intuition relationally and culturally neutral? review essay: Terry Atkinson & Guy

Cappon, D. (1994). Psychology Today. The Anatomy of Intuition. Retrieved on May 29, 2016 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199305/the-anatomy-intuition

Millis, B. (1995). Introducing faculty to cooperative learning, in W. A. Wright (Ed.), Teaching improvement practices: successful strategies for higher education. Bolton, MA: Anker,
cha. 5.

Moldoveanu, M. (2011, fall). Adaptive intelligence: Sources and foundations for integrative thinking. Rotman Management, 78-82.

Silver, I. (1992). stand up and be counted. Unpublished outline, Department of Psychiatry, Geriatric Division, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Soll, J. B., Milkman, K. L., & Payne, J. W. (2015). Outsmart your own biases. Harvard Business Review, (5), 64.

Tiberius, R., Silver, I. (2001) Guidelines for Conducting Workshops and Seminars That Actively Engage Participants. Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. Retrived
from, http://www.academicpsychiatry.org/htdocs/Fidlerdocs/Education/Faculty_Development/teaching-skills/guidelines_for_conducting_workshops_(2001).htm

Tiberius, R. G. (1990). Teaching physicians about teaching: An experiential workshop. Medical Teacher, 12(1), 23-32.