MA in Critical and Creative Thinking
Reflective Practitioner's Portfolio
INTRODUCTION
I am a designer, artist, and an assistant professor of fashion design. I chose to pursue a Master of Arts in Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) at UMass Boston to compliment my design background and help strengthen my teaching practice. I received my MA in Critical and Creative Thinking in May 2020 and walked away with so much more than a degree. My teaching practice as well as how I think, problem-find, and problem-solve have transformed as a result of the CCT program. This website includes a selection of my writings while in the program, which document some of my processes. The courses below are listed in the order in which I took them.
602 - Creative Thinking
I began my studies in the spring semester of 2018 with Creative Thinking. Having worked for 15 years as a designer, I was initially curious and excited to see how a class in creative thinking might offer me new perspective. I developed a new understanding that creativity and creative thinking can be developed to some degree through the use of various creative thinking methods and tools. This is where my newfound interest in the psychology of creativity was sparked and thus began the shift in thinking that would eventually lead to a shift in the way I taught.
Excerpts from my second reflective review essay below hint at how I began my journey toward developing a Critical, Creative, and Conceptual Thinking toolbox for my teaching practice and to share with other educators:
"In general, I see a growth pattern emerging with applying the creative thinking techniques I’ve learned to my classrooms in order to help my students generate more interesting ideas and get them unstuck from creative blocks during ideation and brainstorming sessions. Techniques such as metaphorical thinking, forced relationships, visualizations, SCAMPER, Van Gundy’s Idea Stimulators, active involvement while creating, as well as sharing ideas from the social entrepreneurship videos are slowly being worked into my current classes and will play a larger role in my upcoming classes next fall and spring."
"I will maximize the likelihood of sharing creative thinking concepts with my students by continuing to develop a creative thinking ‘bible’ which I will draw upon and make handouts from when teaching my classes. I will maximize the likelihood of using active techniques by continually practicing them since forming a habit is one of the best ways that I stick with something."
I have also included the virtual museum exhibit I created during this course along with a paper that explains it in more detail.
611 - Design for Living Complexities
During this class, one of the biggest changes in my thinking involved moving from purely researching and suggesting solutions to a problem, to developing focused, and achievable plans of action. In my personal life I encounter problems and brainstorm solutions, but I often do not think beyond these musings into creating plans for implementation. This class has shifted my way of thinking about a variety of problems to include tangible plans of action.
During this course, I enjoyed how much I was able to teach myself about issues through independent research. Rapidly designing potential solutions to a variety of issues improved my ability to research as well as to think critically about problems. My process initially involved research along with many ideas for solving an issue, but as I progressed in the course, my process improved by developing a focus on one or two solutions and a tangible plan for solving them.
This class helped me explore and apply the principles for critical thinking about design to my teaching practice. A few of the major perspectives I have gained include: being able to look at the design process from multiple angles; questioning assumptions about design and my pedagogy; discovering ways to inspire my students to seek alternative approaches to their design solutions before making final decisions, as well as considering alternative approaches to their design solutions even after decisions are made; considering alternative approaches to the way I approach design education.
Awakenings - Part I:
One of the exercises done in this class resonated with me on a deeper level. The assignment involved examining the timeline of my personal life as it relates to regional and global events. What I saw emerge is that my adult life has been accentuated by a series of awakenings. As I see it, the first awakening I experienced as a young adult was about finding my creativity and actively pursuing it. My second and most powerful awakening came after having children and awakening to the enjoyment of both community and being physically active. The third was realizing that my happiness was more important to me than a decent well paying job in my field. This led me to take a big risk by leaving a very secure job to actively pursue my goal of becoming an educator full time. Reflecting upon these awakenings led me to examine how I might actively create awakenings in the future rather than waiting for them to happen.
612 - Overcoming Creative Blocks
This class further developed my interest in the psychology of creativity, particularly in terms of the psychology of restrictions in creativity. I also learned to better assess my creative self, which helped me to think more about modeling reflection, self-inquiry, and assessment processes for students as part of my pedagogy. The class also helped me to think about reflecting between design projects when there isn't time to reflect during them due to tight deadlines. Reflecting on and assessing how things went, what might have been done better, and how I use that information to make changes in future projects are all things I teach to my students now. I see self-reflection and assessment as an integral yet intuitive part of the design process. Many students need to develop this type of intuition and so now I make these practices more explicit in my pedagogy. I believe that frequent reflection and assessment can help students analyze their creative processes which can often help prevent creative blocks from happening in the first place.
Examining one artist's creative block helped me to analyze and synthesize the underlying causes of creative blocks. The below essay and accompanying visuals detail this further.
627 - Issues and Controversies in Antiracist and Multicultural Education
This course further developed my understanding of the advantages some students have over others and how to help create a more equitable education for all.
I teach an accessory design class which includes lectures on the history of accessories and adornment. I understand there is no way to possibly cover every part of history in the time frame allotted, so I present pieces from various cultures that I believe will spark interest, curiosity, inspiration, and further investigation. I had previously worked to remove the Eurocentric lens from my lectures, but after studying it further in this class I went back and reviewed my lectures. Although diverse, I did find them to have a bit of a Eurocentric lens as they moved from the past to the present day. I further reworked my lectures to include more cultural diversity within the past two centuries. I included images from a recent trip to Ghana where I learned the traditional bead-making process and purchased various types of traditional bead jewelry to share with my students. Students from all backgrounds found this to be the most interesting part of the history of jewelry and adornment presentation, as evidenced by their abundance of questions and comments during this segment of the presentation. The multicultural education class also inspired me to create an assignment where my students research an accessory or type of adornment that falls outside of European culture to share with the class. This provides them the opportunity to conduct self-directed research on non-European cultures, investigate what interests them, and share and discuss their findings with their peers while learning from one another.
The following writing sample explores and analyzes the implications of Eurocentric education.
692 - Processes of Research and Engagement
Initially, when I began considering my idea of bringing design into elementary school, I was passionate about exposing young people to design in order to open their eyes to the world around them, showing them the prevalence of design and the various career opportunities it offered. I also knew that engaging students in design would build critical and creative thinking skills and problem-solving skills.
However, there was something that I did not realize at first, which began to develop as my thinking about design education deepened. I have come to understand, and wholeheartedly believe that design has highly valuable cross-disciplinary potential. I now see how truly important it is for students to study something that can bring together what they are learning in various subject areas and help them to see a bigger picture in their education and in their lives. I believe that what the college students in my classrooms are missing today is the ability to make connections, form associations between seemingly disparate ideas, and the ability to step back and see the big picture. If my students were explicitly exposed to the principals of design as early as second grade, and were shown how it connects supposedly unrelated subjects in education, they would be more prepared to think not only as designers in my classroom but also as problem-solving young adults in the workplace. I believe that every student can and should benefit from a foundational education in design.
Processes of Research and Engagement lead me to more improved and professional ways of conducting and obtaining research, such as utilizing UMass Boston's online library and interviewing the right people in the right way in order to back up my ideas and plans. I improved the way I organized my ideas and research.
655 - Metacognition
Metacognition was one of my favorite CCT courses. This is where I first discovered mind-wandering and its link to creativity, which later inspired a classroom exercise that I conducted while writing my synthesis. This course further developed my interest in psychology and brain science, particularly as it pertains to learning and creativity. I gained an understanding of human cognitive development and cognitive processes during the course. The most useful technique I learned was understanding the verbal behaviors that encourage students' metacognitive behavior. I began using them immediately in my classroom and improved upon them as I learned more during the course. I further developed my understanding of the power of asking questions instead of giving answers – getting students to think and arrive at conclusions on their own. I also honed how to let students lead their own learning process by allowing them to help one another through group assignments. I also learned about the benefits of scaffolding students' learning. The combined ideas covered in this course created a permanent shift in my thinking that has stuck with me and the way I teach. I believe that metacognition is useful in all fields, and can improve the way one learns and teaches or guides others.
Below is an example of a metacognitive lesson plan which I implemented in one of my fashion design courses.
693 - Action Research
During this course, the seed of my synthesis idea was planted along with the development of the idea for a 3Cs (critical, creative, and conceptual thinking) toolbox, although it changed quite a bit by the time my synthesis was underway.
The exciting shift in thinking I had during Action Research was that I could develop a toolbox as a means of engaging conceptual thinking. This is when I began shifting from the idea of creating a critical and creating thinking course at MassArt to creating a course that also incorporates conceptual thinking. Thus my idea for the 3Cs (critical, creative, and conceptual thinking) toolbox was born and it changed the focus of my course in a way that I believed could improve student learning. I envisioned the creation of a portable set of tools for students to use across all classes and into the future that could allow students to absorb information across all classes and not just during one of my courses. I imagined that it could give students something to refer back to and utilize to help their critical, creative, and conceptual thinking develop.
This course also helped reinforce that having a well researched and planned out proposal is essential to having ideas come to fruition, and the importance of building constituency in order to get others on board with the “action” you plan to take.
618 - Creative Thinking, Collaboration, and Organizational Change
One of my take-aways from this course is that I don’t need to always play it safe when seeking to implement organizational change. For example, I can think big with the idea of creating a faculty maker space instead of trying to implement small group lunches to stimulate cross-departmental collaboration. However, thinking big can also mean breaking down the whole and starting it in smaller increments. For example, I might first pilot a maker space with just two departments. I could then learn from the process by taking stock of what worked well, and what could be changed to work better before attempting to implement this on a large scale. Once I know it is working well with just two departments, I could run it on a larger scale. This would also allow me to rally support by demonstrating to my colleagues and the administration that the idea is viable.
Awakenings - Part II:
While I'm not sure I was able to actively create an awakening, I have become more aware of the potential for them to occur since taking Design for Living Complexities. During Creative Thinking, Collaboration, and Organizational Change I came upon my 4th major awakening, which involves learning to enjoy the journey. I knew the journey was slipping away from me as I pursued a permanent position at my job and my master's degree, and I squeezed my kids ever tighter and loved them exuberantly each day. However, I still was unable to “enjoy” what was happening. While taking this class, I read about personal mastery and envisioning goals. This led me down a rabbit hole of watching Srikumar Rao’s TED talks. Rao’s talk on How To Eliminate Stress And Anxiety FOREVER resonated with me. During his talk he discusses slowing down and enjoying the journey because just as soon as we get to our destination we are off to pursue something else. This endless pursuit permits life’s distractions to veil our ability to appreciate what we have in the here and now. I have long been interested in how sentient beings seem so distracted by the past and the future, while the animals around them fervently and successfully live for the present. Something I wrote during my late teens or early twenties was, “A sentient’s loss is the present”. The future is uncertain and the past is intangible. And so, every day now I remind myself that this is it. This moment on this day with these people (and animals, and plants) is what I have. This moment is real and is here and happening now. Life is not about the goals you set out to pursue. Life is solely the experience of the journey or the process. I was already aware that I needed to appreciate the present, but it seems I required permission to truly enjoy the journey. I have now awakened and granted myself permission to enjoy the journey. I've noticed that my days are more vivid and my enjoyment of daily life has improved.
619 - Biomedical Ethics
This course taught me to look at everything through a critical lens, and not to accept anything at face value. Prior to this course I think I would look at selective things through a critical lens while accepting other things at face value. I developed an understanding that the medical field is driven by money as much as other big businesses and they are just as capable of mass manipulation. I was surprised at the extent to which many doctors are influenced by pharmaceutical companies pushing their products on patients, how big pharma manipulates direct to consumer advertising, and that drug/medical testing happens without full disclosure of negative side effects to study participants. This course opened my eyes to the importance of critical thinking in all aspects of life.
Below is an ethical theory I developed that aims to minimize limitations and offer solutions to treating patients with equality. This theory draws its strengths from a collaborative effort between bioethicists and social scientists, who come together to create an interdisciplinary field that tackles bioethics by considering a wide range of perspectives. It borrows some positive aspects from classical theories while attempting to avoid some of their drawbacks.
601 - Critical Thinking
Initially, I thought critical thinking involved a specific set of skills that could be learned within a short period of time, and be applied by the learner almost immediately in any type of situation. After I began engaging with this Critical Thinking course, particularly after completing some of the readings, my initial assumptions about how critical thinking can be taught started to change. I began to comprehend that critical thinking is a skill that needs to be learned in a contextualized manner. I also began to see that this skill needs to be built over a time period longer than one class can provide. In order to be most effective, it should ideally happen throughout a student’s entire educational experience.
Having taken critical thinking toward the end of my CCT journey, I found I was able to immediately integrate what I learned by creating a new tool for classroom critiques. I have now utilized this tool with students repeatedly over a couple of semesters. I plan to continue using this tool over time with the same students, thereby helping to build their critical thinking skills. This tool later became one of the 3Cs (critical, creative, and conceptual thinking) toolbox components featured in my synthesis.
694 - Synthesis of Theory and Practice
Throughout my time in CCT I have learned to apply the idea of proof of concept to my pedagogy. As a designer, I am very familiar with proof of concept which involves prototyping, and often multiple revisions, to prove that a design idea can work. I've learned to see this as something that needs to happen with a pedagogical idea or proposal. For example, I initially thought about offering a 3Cs (critical, creative, and conceptual thinking) class at MassArt which is a time-consuming undertaking that faces many hurdles before it can be implemented. Now I realize that doing things in small amounts, testing them out, and demonstrating they can work (proof of concept/prototyping) is a more easily achievable way of implementing a pedagogical idea. I have experimented with ideas in my own classrooms first and written about the results as initial experimentation and proof of concept. I am also introducing the 3Cs toolbox to faculty as a guidebook so they can read about it and test it out in their own classrooms rather than me designing an entire course around this idea. In this way, others can contribute to the proof of concept, and I can reach a larger audience of my target group (students). This shift in thinking has led me to understand how to implement something in an achievable, practical way.
I didn't realize it when I first entered the CCT program, but my synthesis began to form with the very first course I took. As I applied new ideas I learned directly to my pedagogy, I was engaging and shaping students in different ways, and my synthesis was building. In the process of progressing through the program, I learned to assess what was working well and what wasn't working well and revised some of my pedagogical approaches. I adapted what I had learned and began designing original approaches that best suited my students' learning and engagement. The adaptation of critical and creative thinking tools to best suit faculty needs became a key idea for my synthesis. During Synthesis of Theory and Practice, I shifted my thinking from creating a 3Cs toolbox for students to creating one for faculty which I felt would ultimately reach a wider audience of students. My synthesis blends what I have learned in CCT into a focused pedagogical approach.
The following file includes excerpts from my synthesis. The exit self-assessment includes final reflections on my synthesis and growth in the CCT program.
I'm done! I'm done! I'm done!
The best part is that I’m feeling relief, but I’m not feeling that empty, I don’t know what to do with myself now that school is over feeling. This program has set me on a lifelong path of curiosity, research, discovery, and most of all, practice. CCT has helped me develop a deep interest in the psychology of creativity as well as using critical thinking to make art and design education more intellectual. I plan to continue my research along with creating new methods informed by that research to help my students become their best creative selves. I have found motivation and passion to link to my pedagogy that I believe will last a lifetime.