Community of Practice: Embedding Creative Problem Solving into Tertiary Teaching and Learning

Abstract

In this workshop we will give an overview of general concepts defining a Community of Practice (CoP) which were first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger in their 1991 book Situated Learning (Lave & Wenger 1991).

Building on this, Barbara Jaworski (2008) established and researched Communities of Inquiry (CoIs) as part of the project funded by the Research Council of Norway with successful outcomes.

Altering the setting and objectives, we are conceiving a project that will foster communal activity and engagement of tertiary educators aimed at improving learning outcomes for New Zealand tertiary graduates. This initiative is based on our joint pilot project of AUT and University of Auckland titled “Enhancing Generic Thinking Skills of Tertiary STEM Students through Puzzle-Based Learning: Students’ Perspectives” in 2016-2017 supported by the Northern Hub Regional Fund of Ako Aotearoa. As part of that project we incorporating non-routine problem solving into university courses by introducing puzzle-solving activities during traditional lectures. The intention of using non-routine problem solving in teaching and learning is to engage students' emotions, creativity and curiosity and also enhance their critical thinking skills and lateral thinking “outside the box”. The impact was evaluated via comprehensive questionnaires, interviews and class observations involving 137 STEM students. The vast majority of the participants reported enhanced problem-solving skills (91%) and generic thinking skills (92%). Moreover, we were able to find evidence of improved confidence in solving non-routine problems as a result of our intervention, suggesting that this pedagogical strategy improves graduate attributes and employability by means of enhanced self-efficacy (Klymchuk, S., 2017).

Why This Topic Is Important (250 words)

Professional development (PD) of tertiary educators is often an unstructured activity driven by idiosyncratic initiatives such as attending a selected PD workshop. In many universities, the promotional drivers are in place to ensure that academics produce high-impact research leaving a reduced amount of time spent on improvement of their teaching practices. The consensus is that research academics are competent for teaching their subject at a tertiary level. What is the most efficient way to engage academics in professional development activities? We are basing our approach on the ideas of Jaworski, who set up and researched a Community of Inquiry as an example of collaborative activity with reciprocal forms of expertise, knowing and experience that have contributed to community building. Our research group is focusing on the needs of PD for STEM educators. In 2012, the New Zealand government identified the need to reduce the undersupply of students studying STEM subjects as a priority for delivering its Business Growth Agenda (http://www.mbie.govt.nz/). Over the years this issue has become even more important in the New Zealand context. At the launch of the AUT’s STEM Tertiary Education Centre (STEM-TEC) in 2014 Hon Steven Joyce commented that many New Zealand innovative high-tech companies could not find suitable candidates in New Zealand and had to go through a long and expensive recruitment process hiring staff from overseas. There were many local applicants with suitable university degrees who could presumably do a routine job very well but the companies needed more than that – they needed candidates with highly innovative and creative thinking skills. With this mind, the proposed project seeks to establish an efficient PD initiatives to incorporate a pedagogical intervention at tertiary level aimed at enhancing learner engagement, their creativity and self-efficacy more generally. How The Session Will Be Run (200 words)

We would like to engage participants in constructive discussions that foster ideas about future possibilities for establishment of CoPs.

We will take about 10 minutes to present our research followed by a 40-minute workshop, during which we hope to leverage expertise of the participants to inform our research programme. To that end, we will ask participants to work in small groups and to come up with propositions that are suitable in the suggested context of creative problem solving.

After sharing ideas around, we will aim to identify what are the important features of the emergence of CoPs, their sustained administration and evaluation of their success. Other outcomes include: understanding the importance and benefits of enhancing creative problem solving skills for tertiary students including their employability; improving knowledge of general problem solving principles; familiarisation with different tests of measuring creativity, in particular divergent and convergent thinking (Guilford, (1959), Leikin & Pitta-Pantazi, (2013), Leikin, (2009), Haylock (1987), (1997)).

References Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Jaworski, B. (2008) Building and sustaining inquiry communities in mathematics teaching development. K. Krainer and T. Wood (eds.), Participants in Mathematics Teacher Education, 309–330. Klymchuk, S. (2017). Puzzle-Based Learning in Engineering Mathematics: Students’ Attitudes. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, published online 15 May. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2017.1327088. Guilford, J. P. (1959). Traits of creativity. In H. H. Anderson (Ed.), Creativity and its cultivation (pp. 142- 161). New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Leikin, R. & Pitta-Pantazi, D. (2013). Creativity and mathematics education: The state of the art. ZDM - The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 45(2), 159–166. Leikin, R. (2009). Exploring mathematical creativity using multiple solution tasks. In R. Leikin, A. Berman, & B. Koichu (Eds.), Creativity in mathematics and the education of gifted students (pp. 129–145). Sense Publishers: Rotterdam. Haylock, D. (1987). A framework for assessing mathematical creativity in school children. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 18(1), 59–74. Haylock, D. (1997). Recognizing mathematical creativity in school children. International Reviews on Mathematical Education, 29(3), 68-74.