It is widely accepted that in
order for a human, no matter their age, to learn and grow, the opportunities
for them to learn need to be varied and provide a marriage of engagement,
extension and challenge. Each person
needs to be challenged in all spheres of their life to enable effective and
positive growth – opportunities need to be provided for learners to engage
with, and rely on all aspects that are incorporated within their Hauora.
Professor Howard Gardener
presents Five Minds for the Future that each of us need to develop in order to continue to
grow and become lifelong learners – however, as educators we not only need to
develop these minds within ourselves but cultivate these five minds within our
students, our communities and our society – and that is no easy task. Each of
these five minds, or five disciplines, embodies distinctly different ways of
thinking about and of viewing and learning from the world. The five minds that
Howard Gardener proposes are crucial to developing learners who are prepared
for the world of tomorrow are: the disciplined mind, the synthesising mind, the
creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind.
In order to develop these minds
within the communities in which we work, we need to ensure that we help
students to learn how to learn, to develop a love of learning and to see
learning as a way to continually enhance their contribution to their society.
The disciplined mind requires us
to help students become passionate about the world in which they live, and
about accumulating knowledge about this world.
When this occurs, and students learn because they are passionate about
acquiring new knowledge, it is then that we are beginning to do our job of
helping to create lifelong learners who yearn to better both themselves and help
others to do the same.
The synthesising mind, and the
ability to be able to piece together vital information from the abundance of
material that exists, is necessary in our world today for learners to remain
engaged, and enthusiastic about their learning. Young students have the
tendency, and the ability to see and make connections in areas that as adults,
we might not naturally draw connections.
It is so important that as educators we provide students with the
opportunity to continue to make these connections and to help others also see
and make connections. The question of
how to do this in a schooling system that is still fairly subscribed and where
all students are required to learn the same thing and be tested upon it against
national standards is a troubling one and one that requires on-going
reflection. In order to develop adults who are able to synthesise information
and see relationships that are not instantly obvious it is crucial that we
celebrate and not censor the connections that are made so effortlessly by the
minds of the youth of today and the voice of tomorrow.
Learners, and students, who ask
questions and are dissatisfied with the way that things are currently occurring,
due to the knowledge that there is a way the given task could be done more
effectively and more efficiently, have strength in the area of the creative
mind and are to be valued. We need to
guarantee both students and ourselves the chance to be different from the
crowd, to seek to understand and analyse the unexpected and to determine what
truths may be hidden in that which often frightens people. By providing students and colleagues the
opportunity to fail, and fail dramatically we are ensuring their success and
creating the perseverance within them to chase their dreams, to never stop
questioning and to pick themselves up and try again. A school that allows and requires students to
adapt to uncertainty, surprise and change fosters the creative mind and is
something that I believe we should all aim for.
However, it is of great
importance to remember the creative, synthesising and disciplined mind cannot
achieve success without the respectful and ethical minds. Requiring students to
work together, and modelling respectfully working with and seeking to
understand those who are different to ourselves fosters an understanding in
students what true respect looks like.
When one is truly respectful they are continually offering others the
benefit of the doubt and self-reflecting to remain open to the possibility that
they may have judged others wrongly in the past and seeking to put this right.
Genuine acts of respect are detectable every day, not just when someone is
looking and it is these that we need to develop in our students for them to
effectively contribute to society, and remain lifelong learners once they leave
the safety net of our classrooms.
The ethical mind is not as easy
to define but can be considered through and measured against the four M’s that
define ethical behaviour in society.
These are Mission, Models, and the two Mirror tests. When an individual, be it a child or an
adult, is able to say that they are following through with the four M’s, it can
be said that that person has an ethical mind and is focused on the greater
good. When one understands their
Mission, they are able to move in the right direction and avoid trouble thus
allowing them to be on the path to achieving their mission. With role Models who embody goodness,
individuals are exposed to examples of how to effectively achieve success in an
ethical manner. If an individual is able to stand in front of a Mirror and
believe that they are proceeding in ways of which they approve, and are proud
of, then it can be said that they are ethical within themselves. The final Mirror test is one of group or
professional responsibility – unless an individual is accountable to, and holds
accountable, their peers than they are not ensuring that they are ethical
within their contributions to society.
If one is willing to continue to achieve, and work for the greater good
whilst abiding by the four M’s even when the going gets tough, it can be said
that they truly embody the ethical mind.
The aim to achieve Howard
Gardeners Five Minds provides a much needed marriage of engagement, extension
and challenge. Nurturing each of these
minds within our students, communities and society will help ensure that the
next generation is willing and able to meet the still-unknown challenges of the
future. The future, that is currently in
our hands.
The fact that future of education
is in our hands and that, at times, can be an overwhelming and frightening
thought. We may each go through stages
where we are dreaming of a Utopia where everything is perfect or where we are
dreading a Dystopia where we have failed both ourselves and our students but in
order to enhance the education of the future we need to set both dreaming and
dreading down and begin designing. When designing we have the opportunity to
work every day to actively create the future that we want, and it is an
opportunity that needs to be seized with both hands. There is no point in reinventing the wheel
but there are a myriad of systems in place from which we have the ability to
reshape and reconstruct the best in order to create something better.
If future focussed learning is to
occur it is essential that we focus on all aspects of learning: what is being
learnt, how it is being learnt, how we know and measure the learning that is
occurring, where learning occurs, when learning happens and who is involved.
Present systems may adjust one or two of these aspects but what is needed for
success as a society and for students to be prepared for the future is for
fluidity to develop between these six aspects of learning. When we have designed a system that is
focussed on future learning, and incorporates Gardener’s Five Minds, children’s
learning is accelerated, children are interested and they are individually
choosing to apply themselves to the learning process. Whilst each system needs
to be designed to fit the needs of the community and society that it serves,
outside conditions need to enable to the process. When public policy, leadership, readiness,
funding and public acceptance align with schools, and when governance places
trust in schools there is the opportunity to provide students with the path
that best leads them to success and where Gardener’s Five Minds can truly come
into fruition.
