Reproduced with permission © Phil Holden Photography 2012
Andy
Penaluna
Learning in an
Enterprising
Age
9/7/2014
Learning in an Enterprising Age
• Considers challenges related to developing creative
capacity in learners
• Challenges existing practices
• Offer insights into current thinking and indicates new
ways forward
• Fits with QAA Guidance
Leeds Met?
Leeds Met?
Research into HE quality enhancement and the
development of fit for purpose students
• How is knowledge constructed?
• To what purpose can we put constructed knowledge?
• How do we operate when knowledge is incomplete?
• How do we operate when knowledge changes
rapidly?
Just to start thinking…
• Please hold up your phone in the air
• Only keep your hand up if it is a Nokia
• 7 years ago Nokia owned 50% of the handset
market. Apple owned 0%.
• Today—Apple is the most profitable Smartphone
company in the world and in Spain Android (Also 7
yrs old) commands a market share of more than
90%.
• Nokia? Its worldwide market share of Smartphones
has dwindled to 5%.
Steve Blank 2014
Just to start thinking…
• Many entrepreneurs start by questioning something’s
validity or purpose, usually in relationship to perceived
target audiences
• They question and challenge knowledge – in order to
find new ways forward – the best ones surprise you
• How does that fit with how we teach?
• Assess??
Essential basic premises
Think of something creative or innovative…
…then ask, how predictable was that?
1+1 = 2, but 1+?+1 = ? (Abduction)
The more creative something is, the harder it is
to communicate to those who don’t understand
Mistakes
Experiments
Practices
Lucky (Get
away with it)
Success – it
worked /
You’ve
learned
You got it
right / you
understand
Wasn’t
thinking?
Failure/
You’ve
learned
Success
Failure
Behaviour
Wrong?
Bad luck?
Learning Zone
Adapted from Jurgen Appelo (2014)
Innovation Dilemma
• What makes a great new idea and how do
you recognize it as such?
• Measure and Manage?
(Every student needs a degree classification)
• If it is new and surprising, how do you
write a learning outcome for it?
Essential basic premises
An idea is acknowledged to be creative if it is
novel, or surprising and adaptive, functional
or effective (Simonton, 2000).
Do you expect your students to develop
enhanced capacities as they learn?
…so do you map the increased enhancement of
creative capacity?
Consider this…
Knowledge = less curiosity
Less curious = accepts norms
Acceptance of norms = see fewer challenges
Less challenges = less deep thinking about
alternatives
…and less thinking ‘far and wide’ through
personal discovery inhibits neurological
development
Are you concentrating??
How do you think?
Logical
Clear
Manageable
Sequentially valid
Unclear
Complex
(until patterns emerge and
links are made)
(Reductionist - to
make sense of
complexity)
Image Courtesy of Google Campus
The innovative thinking journey
Look for
inspiration,
contextual
materials
and links
Reflect and
analyze –
use time
thoughtfully
Penaluna & Penaluna 2006
Discard irrelevant
or non beneficial Seek out
freshly
information
identified
problems /
solutions
Deadline =
solution
proposal
Divergent - Convergent thinking
Yes but how can you evaluate these skills?
Psychologists, brain injury specialists and informed
design educators use tools such as:
Ideational Fluency (number of ideas generated)
Expressional Fluency (How many connections and links
can you make through reflective processes) and
Divergent Production (How disparate are the
connections made that lead to creative solutions).
Bisociation – isn’t creativity just making new
connections?
Good creative connections can be a puzzle – yet you
know the answer already
KILLS BUGS FAST
Research into HE Quality and Enhancement
We have to question - is recalled knowledge enough?
Advances in cognitive neurology informs us that the
decision-making process is emotionally-driven first and
then logically-driven
It also illustrates how differently individual brain cells
may grow - according to the type of teaching and
learning experienced
Gestalt - what do you really ‘know’?
Limens, Soma, Dendrites and connections
Research into neural understandings
Is recalled knowledge
enough?
Brain functionality / cortex’s
Key point – Developing synapse potential through learning
Left Cortex
dominance
Right Cortex
dominance
Micro molecular
structure images
courtesy of Mark
Jung Beeman and
John Kounios, Mid
Western and Drexel
Universities
Detail of Pyramid
neuron from the
amygdala /
hippocampus
Evolved model for QAA / UN
Thoughtful and
conscious Subconscious
Incorporating divergent production
(Cognitive Neurology / Brain in Learning Cycles)
= ‘Aha’
Multiple ideas and flexible thought
enables contextual decision making
© Penaluna & Penaluna 2009 / 2010
Brain images courtesy of Drexel and
Midwestern Universities M Jung
Beeman and J. Kuoinos
Simple academic
achievement?
(Is business a more complex environment?)
The Issues:
Employability, Enterprise or Entrepreneurship?
Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Employability are moving
closer together, but enterprising people need to be able to
spot opportunities – it is a key requirement
“There is unquestionably an overlap… Enterprise
Education can enhance careers education and student
employability by enabling students to be more
opportunity focussed, self-aware and more tuned to the
business environment.”
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/
Documents/enterprise-guidance.pdf (Page 9)
The Issues:
Employability, Enterprise or Entrepreneurship?
“more and more graduates turned to SMEs
for employment opportunities, and a good
enterprising approach was valued in these
small and micro businesses… Yes the agendas
were merging and it was indicated that less
than 20% of graduates in the UK found their
way into the top 100 companies, hence
developing enterprising mindsets was a key
requirement for both agendas.”
http://blogs.heacademy.ac.uk/social-sciences/2013/04/29/changing-society-therole-of-enterprise-education-in-achieving-economic-and-social-impact/
Researchers and Vitae
The enterprising researcher, March 2014
“Unis focus on being perfectly right, but the real world needs you to be
able to fail and get up again, time after time. It happens of course, but it
needs to be highlighted in researcher development.”
Enterprising
mind
With personal
motivation there is
energy, with energy
there is resilience,
with resilience,
success is likely...
Creativity, innovation
and opportunity
recognition are key
intrinsic motivational
drivers, they are
central to the
enterprising mindset
© A Penaluna, 2012
Key researcher / educator thinking
“Ability to challenge assumptions, recognise patterns,
see in new ways, make connections, take risks and
seize upon chance”
Vidal, R.V.V. (2004), ‘Creativity for operational researchers, informatics and
mathematical modelling’, Technical University of Denmark.
Bilateral Multi Solution Finding Model
(Penaluna & Penaluna, 2014)
Convergent and Divergent Expression Pedagogic Framework
Convergent and Divergent Expression Pedagogic Framework
Knowledge Harvester
Enterprising
mind
Entrepreneur
The ‘business
developer and
enhancer’
Social
entrepreneur
‘The society
developer and
enhancer’
Enterprising Angels © A Penaluna, 2010
Overall aim - learning to learn;
they use harvested knowledge to
societal and economic advantage
The QAA (and Vitae) guidance is
not specific to any particular
degree programme or subject
specialism, but is instead intended
to help academics, educators and
practitioners who are seeking to
embed enterprise and
entrepreneurship across the
curriculum
Key Policy Documents:
Wilson Review of University Business
Collaboration (February 2012)
To achieve world leadership in university-business
collaboration, all domains in the landscape must
attain excellence; the strength of the supply chain is
defined by its weakest link. Effective joined-up policy
in this field, therefore, has to be informed by
knowledge of the entire landscape.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file
/32383/12-610-wilson-review-business-university-collaboration.pdf
The Issues:
Knowing what the future holds – pace of change
“Our belief is that deep, radical and urgent
transformation is required in higher education as
much as it is in school systems. Our fear is that,
perhaps as a result of complacency, caution or
anxiety, or a combination of all three, the pace of
change is too slow and the nature of change too
incremental.”
http://www.ippr.org/publication/55/10432/an-avalanche-is-coming-higher-educationand-the-revolution-ahead
Is an Avalanche coming?
“…people need to have ‘an ability to fail, an ability to
have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on those
ideas, and to be persistent so that even as you fail you
learn and move onto the next adventure. ”
Barber, M., Donnelly, K. & Rizvi, S. (2013) AN AVALANCHE IS COMING: Higher
education and the revolution ahead. London: Institute for Public Policy Research p65
Is a Creativity Avalanche coming too?
Research indicates a significant drop in creative
thinking scores in US schools. According to Kim there is
a creativity crisis. Using the Torrance Tests of Creative
Thinking (TTCT), and a sample of 272,599 pupils
(kindergarten to fourth grade), Kim evidences
‘Decreased Creative Thinking in the Past 20 Years’,
noting that ‘the decline is steady and persistent’.
Kim, K. H. (2011), ‘The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Score on the Torrance Tests of
Creative Thinking’ Creativity Research Journal, 23 (4), 285-295.
Conclusion - Curiosity Based Learning and
Assessment = Creative enhancement
Within situational learning scenarios - students
discover problems and issues, produce multiple
solutions that are significantly varied and
disparate, and their solutions surprise you
(based on QAA, 2012)
Facilitate discovery first, then teach following an
enquiring experience that elicits multiple
solutions – not single ‘correct’ answers
(based on QAA, 2012)
The bigger
context
Now more than ever we need
innovation, new solutions,
creative approaches and new
ways of operating. We are in
uncharted territory and need
people in all sectors and at all
ages who can “think out of the
box” to identify and pursue
opportunities in new and
paradigm-changing ways.
http://www.weforum.org/reports/educating-nextwave-entrepreneurs
Do the maths?
Business, Employability,
Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
minus
Innovation and Creativity = ?
Andy Penaluna
Learning in an Enterprising Age