Jeremy,
Thanks! You have an interesting approach that should help your
students be critically aware of how they think. Well done and
described!
On Jul 28, 2009, at 12:05 AM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
> It is a a bit of thought that i took from dewey's how we think. he
> posited that very few people have ever sat back and tried to
> experience and then articulate the experience of their own thought.
> My exercise in this is generally to help people understand how their
> minds work in relation to imagery and narrative. I show them an
> image that they don't know, but it heavily embedded in myth or
> cultural reference. I show them that and ask them to try to
> identify it. To use their knowledge of their culture, or whatever
> they have available. I ask them to identify the object as well as
> they can. Then after that, i ask them to write about what they did
> mentally while they were trying to figure out what the thing in the
> image was. I ask them to remember and phenomenologically
> experience that mental process and write it out. after all that i
> ask them to share that experience. it is important that no one
> shares it before it is written, or they will all write the same
> thing, which is usually just what the first person says.
>
> from this i've gathered that i generally have 3 types of thinkers
> more or less, so far... and this is not research, this is just
> gathered from student exercises.
>
> there are textualists/narrativists, which are looking for reference
> and story
I view these as separate modes one more anchored in experience than
the other. The textualist thinks in a Referential mode the
narrativist in a Reflective mode based on episodic memory.
> there are conceptualists/analysts which are trying to understand
> composition, relationships, and meaning, usually not using
> narratives, but using conceptual analysis, such as logic, math,
> philosophy
I separate relationships, composition, and conceptual analysis which
is structured articulation from synthesis, expression and meaning
which come in holistic expressions situated in a context of phenomenal
experience. I call the former Relational thinking and the latter
Formative thinking
> there are imagery people, who think in images and attempt to match
> the image, this is most interesting, because there are two sections
> here.... one again is compositionalist, but the other.... describes
> a process of matching or shuffling, which i'm fascinated by. one
> student described it as flipping through his families picture books
> and looking for matches, another one described it as watching movies
> in her mind.
for me your imagery people are those that rely on holistic expressions
recognized and interpreted based on prior perceptual experience.
(Formative mode) I would also accept your process thinkers as
employing a distinct mode of thought (The Procedural mode) - Terry's
functional point of view.
>
> so... those are the modes of thinking that students have reported
> when they are presented with an image that they could probably
> recognize if they knew the right story.
> I am rather surprised that you didn't see judgmental bias in the
> thinking of some of your students - those who use some standard of
> evaluation and judgment other than fit or match. (I call it the
> Evaluative mode. )
> the idea is to get them to think about the way that they think, as
> dewey suggests we do, to push their phenomenological awareness of
> their own minds.
> Great stuff! What was the course called?
> Chuck
>
PS: I have used modal analysis to help students explore their
preferences for roles in design teams, for structuring processes in
the studio, for critical analysis of various messages, and in
interactive group problem solving to see the contribution that
different modes make to resolution. I have found it very useful in
teaching and learning in a variety of contexts.
> On Jul 28, 2009, at 9:58 AM, Charles Burnette wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 27, 2009, at 7:15 PM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>>
>>> One exercise that i have most of my students in upper levels and
>>> graduate school is to phenomonologically investigate the methods
>>> in which they resolve a heuristic problem, the modes of thought
>>> they use, and it is always surprising the variation in modes that
>>> people use, even after years and years of education that seems to
>>> promote one mode over others.
>>
>> Could you elaborate? What modes have you identified? Which have
>> been promoted by education over the others?
>> Thanks,
>> Chuck
>>>
>>
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