Advertising Philosophy / Arts - Romania
Which of the C’s did you choose?
Character: with special emphasis on the ability of learning to learn, own learning, self-regulated work, claiming values and independence of choice, resistance and endurance.
Citizenship: with special emphasis on thinking globally, global citizenship, empathy, interest for solving global problems.
Collaboration: with special emphasis on interpersonal, intercultural, social and emotional skills, as well as learning from others and sharing knowledge.
Communication: with special emphasis on means of communication and reflecting upon better communicating with others.
Creativity: with special emphasis on the ability to come up with relevant and exploring questions, to be flexible, original, and active, to imagine and consider new ideas and solutions, and to do something in the class project with those ideas.
Critical thinking: with special emphasis on the ability to evaluate information, to see connections, to explore and reflect upon ideas and praxis in real life.
Why did you choose them? (What did you want the students to develop?)
Character: I wanted my students to develop the ability of learning to learn, of regulating their own learning and conducting a self-regulated work. I considered it important for the students to develop the ability of claiming values and being able to be independent in choosing those values, as well as saying “no”, and that of being resistant and enduring in time in order to achieve their own goals and the goals of their team, and, most important, to face hard challenges and cope with it.
Citizenship: I wanted my students to develop the capacity of thinking globally and understanding that we are all global citizens. Also, I considered important that they should develop the abilities of empathizing with other human beings and caring for them, as well as to develop a genuine and real interest for solving global problems and then actively become involved in decision-making in order to make a difference in their world and in a global setting.
Collaboration: I wanted my students to develop interpersonal abilities, intercultural, social and emotional skills, as well as to learn something from other classmates and to contribute to their learning too by sharing knowledge, know-how and by teaching others in teamwork how to do practical things.
Communication: I focused on my students' capacity of adapting the means of communication to various groups by using various methods, as well as the ability to reflect upon how to better communicate with others.
Creativity: I was concerned in developing the ability to come up with relevant and exploring questions, to be flexible, original, and active, to imagine and consider new ideas and solutions, and to do something in the class project with those ideas.
Critical thinking: I wanted my students to develop the ability to evaluate information, to see connections and to make meaningful knowledge through Socratic questioning, through deduction and induction processes and through self-directed and self-disciplined research, as well as to explore and reflect upon ideas and praxis in real life.
Which activities did you selected to support the development of these C’s?
I designed an activity with a duration of 5 weeks, which I divided in 3 steps. The name of the activity was “Advertising Philosophy/Arts”. I guided the students to work in such a way that in each part all 6 C’s should be developed.
Step I - Creating teams & Deciding the topic (1 week)
I divided the class in groups/teams of 4-5 students and at the beginning I asked them to decide together as team what project they choose to do: advertisement for an airline of Philosophy OR advertisement for an airline of Art. They were students from 10th and 11th grade who study Arts, but who did not study Philosophy, so their first decision as a team should be: to work on something we are very familiar with (Arts) OR to work on something more challenging, of which we know very little (Philosophy).
During the process of deciding which subject they should choose as a team, citizenship occurred because their task was to build a company they could present worldwide, at a global scale, regardless of latitude, longitude, culture etc. of the people to whom they present their airline. Creativity was involved because they already exchanged original ideas and developed brainstorming in order to understand the pros and cons for Arts or Philosophy. But also, discussing on pros and cons, critical thinking occurred because they had to evaluate their decision and to understand the consequences of their decision, following what I taught them that they should decide and take responsibility as a team. In the process of deciding on their topic, communication was at its best given the fact that they had to put together arguments for their teammates and to adapt their communicating skills in order to follow my indications and form a solid team. Collaboration occurred as well because they shared their previous knowledge with their teammates and also in the whole process of forming a team and of making their first decision together as a team, they developed character as learning to learn from others, as being independent in choice and decision and having the courage of stating values. Most important, student understood that they must be honest both to themselves and to their team mates, so that the process of learning and working together would be transparent and efficient.
Step II - Building the Airline & Advertising it (2-3 weeks)
This step was divided into two separate parts:
Main design & task distribution
Research, outline, proposal draft
The teams had to work together, in class (under my supervision) as well as at home (together and individually), in creating the whole design of their presentation: advertisement for an airline, e.g. Philosophy Airline.
First, they had to elaborate the design of their presentation and to distribute tasks within the team. This was done in class.
Second, they had to research information, to make drawings, to organize the ideas, to make it attractive, etc. This was done mostly at home (they met together and worked in team and they also did individual work of research, drawing, details) and each week in class I checked their progress.
Working together in both parts of step II, students came up with exploring questions about the design, and then they came up with relevant questions about the information that they found, they learned that they must be flexible, original, and active, and they must be open to imagine and consider new ideas and solutions and to exploit new opportunities and change their project accordingly, all these in order to have a good final presentation. All those ideas had to be used and to do something in the class project with them. While deciding the on the design of their presentation and building it, creativity was at its best.
Sharing ideas to others and making the teammates understand one's ideas led to communication. Interesting aspects in communication were that at one point the teams developed their own language and original communication methods and instruments (e.g. they created whatsapp groups for each team, some were understanding each other through their gaze, etc), which showed their profound interest in what they were doing together as well as their deep understanding of humanity in the other. While their work became wider, they were discussing in class, during breaks, through their phones, on social media, and sent each other parts of their individual work, so that they could decide together on the final product. Also, they were teaching each other how to better formulate the text of their presentation.
Also, each team member came with what he or she was best at, and this process strengthened collaboration: some were good at searching information, some were talented in drawing, some had good IT skills, some had great coordinating abilities etc. Therefore, the teams could decide together on the specific tasks of each member and while performing their tasks. Then, as they were acquiring new information, they shared all that information to their team members and taught them how to use them, both in the micro context of their current project, as well as in the wider context of their life as teenagers and future adults (e.g. human nature is social, so this is how their introvert friends should be perceived and talked to, they should not be not isolated from the group).
Character was emphasized since it was all about self-regulated work, with great responsibility in value choosing for the benefit of the team (e.g. synthesizing big pile of data about truth theories and choosing responsibly to present to others the concordance and coherence theory of truth), as well as resistance and endurance in working and delivering upon commitment for the team (e.g. at last 6-9 hours of research for a small continent called Pascal or Descartes). Students learned to be independent in choosing values, as well as saying ”no”whenever they found or heard something that was not in the line of their reflected and chosen values (e.g.saying ”no” to an imposed theory about ideas of Schopenhauer that they heard from an uninstructed eldercolleague). All students were determined to succeed and for this reason they showed perseverance and kept fulfilling their tasks until they achieved the final product (because the amount of work was big, they even engaged their siblings and friends in working with them). Although sometimes they encountered obstacles of various natures (physical, social; e.g. one student got injured in sports and could not continue drawing, the team decided to change strategy, and he replace hand drawings with computer generated images), they overcame them and were confident that together with the team they could accomplish their job.
Critical thinking was involved too through self-directed and self-disciplined research, as well as to explore and reflect upon ideas and praxis in real life. Also they strengthened their ability to evaluate information (e.g. the difference and validity between social and individual theories about human nature), to see connections between various schemes and info (e.g. empirism, rationalism, and Immanuel Kant), and to make meaningful knowledge through Socratic questioning (e.g. what does it mean ”knowledge”?), through deduction (e.g. students saw patterns in the line of developing knowledge in modern and contemporary philosophy) and induction processes of thinking (e.g. if... then...). As a team, they explored and reflect upon ideas and praxis in real life because they tried to adapt their theoretical findings to real life situations (e.g. if a person should berationalist, then, in his or her life... etc.), which was especially challenging for those teams which chose such an abstract topic as Philosophy is. Students constructed knowledge from the scratch (especially in Philosophy, where it was even more difficult to evaluate information and separate valid ideas from fallacies) and learned how to apply this knowledge (e.g. applying philosophical abstract concepts to concrete everyday life situation, such as the Aristotelian social nature of humanity and the relations between students in school, between members of a family etc.).
During the process of finding information, designing, and building the presentation, citizenship occurred because they all felt global citizens (e.g. students considered themselves co-nationals with people from around the globe and developed a sense of responsibility for humanity), working for a final product that would benefit other global citizens, worldwide (e.g. for people in Tanzania, Philippines, Abu Dhabi, and Alaska), so the research of information regarded various types of cultures, as well as the design of the presentation took into consideration the global aspect. Students develop genuine and real interest for solving global problems through arts and philosophy (e.g. because they would make humans more aware of the value of life and peace) and then they thought how to actively become involved in decision-making at a global scale in order to make a difference in their world (e.g. their airline would send a message that would contribute to better living).
Step III - Presenting the project & Evaluation (1 week)
The students must present their ideas in front of the class and receive feedback and evaluation.
The presentations of Arts airline took place with the coordinating teacher of the class and they are currently used for the advertisement of our school for 2019-2020. The presentations of Philosophy airline will take place in the first semester of 2019-2020 during the philosophy classes of the terminal years of study.
How did you experience the impact of the activities on the students?
All students were excited about the tasks that I gave them and they were very interested in following the guidelines that I proposed in order for them to develop all the competences listed above.
I consider that the 6 Cs were developed in an optimum manner and my teacher colleagues told me that students were very happy and committed to working on those special projects about arts or philosophy that I gave them and that they were all proud of their work together.
Students chose to spend some of their free time discussing about their project and also students from other classes, their friends, asked me when we are going to do similar projects too.
I conducted discussions with the students involved in this activity and they all admitted that it was interesting, and they want to do activities like this at least one in each semester. It is a good thing because some of the subjects I teach have the aim of developing the 6Cs, so it makes my work meaningful.