Design Thinking for Autonomy, Purpose and Mastery

Are we actually achieving what we think we want to achieve by having an education system structured the way it is now, based on archaic ways of thinking and with its carrot, sweeter carrot and sharper stick approach?

The research and the science says NO, but governments, social scientists and educationists have, for the last century, made the opposite choice – IGNORE THE RESEARCH AND SCIENCE AND DO WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW ANYWAY! The current education system is stifling and eroding the one talent and skill that young people of the 21^st century need most of all – the power of critical and creative thinking.

Different types of exposure and different types of experiences change the actual structure of brain development. You could say with a very high degree of certainty that children who grew up in the digital age have brains that are literally different from the rest of the human race. It is blatantly obvious in patience thresholds and expectations of waiting time for results and outcomes, and even more so for rewards. It also causes different ways of thinking and have different demands for mental stimulation and sustenance. Most importantly, these brains learn differently.

Our children and students are a different, perhaps new and improved, version of the evolving human brain. They represent the first real generation who grew up nurtured by technology - surrounded by mobile phones, email, Facebook, intelligent systems and digitised information - and their brains and minds have been programmed accordingly; and differently. To expect them to be down and cool with an archaic education system that represents the remnants of the Industrial age is not only crazy, but downright foolish!

Dan Pink spoke about rewards and intrinsic motivations.

“There is this puzzle called The Candle Problem. It was created in 1945 by a psychologist named Karl Duncker and here’s how it works. Suppose I bring you into a room. I give you a candle, some thumbtacks in a box and some matches, and I say to you, "Your job is to attach the candle to the wall above the top of that table, light the candle and ensure the wax does not drip onto the table. You cannot move the table." How would you proceed?

 Figure 1: The Candle Problem

Now, many people begin trying to thumbtack the candle to the wall, which does not work of course. Some people have the perfectly logical idea where they light the match, melt the side of the candle and try to stick it to the wall. Also does not work. Eventually, most people figure out the solution. The key is to overcome what's called Functional Fixedness. You look at that box and you see it only as a receptacle for the tacks. It can also have this other function, as a platform and drip tray for the candle - The Candle Problem.

      Figure 2: The Candle Problem’s solution

A scientist named Sam Glucksberg, who is now at Princeton University in the U.S, conducted a similar experiment. This one shows the power of incentives. He gathered his participants and said, "I'm going to time you. How quickly can you solve this candle problem?"

To one group he said, “I'm going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem.”

To the second group he offered rewards. "If you're in the top 25 percent of the fastest times you get a hundred dollars. If you're the fastest of everyone we're testing here today you get two hundred dollars."

Question: How much faster did this group solve the problem?

Answer: It took them, on average, three and a half minutes longer.

Three and a half minutes longer!

This appears to make no sense, right? If you want people to perform better, you reward them with bonuses, commissions – sweet carrots. But that's not happening here. You think you have an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity. It does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity.

What's important and interesting about this experiment is that it's not a single result in a series of experiments. This has been replicated over and over again, for nearly 40 years. The rule that is supposed to be - if you do this, then you get that – only works in some circumstances. This is one of the most robust findings in social science. It is also one of the most ignored.

Scientists have looked at the science of human motivation, particularly the dynamics of extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators. If you look at the science, there is a mismatch between what science knows and what education does. What's alarming here is that our education operating system is built entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks, exam results, promotions and scholarships. That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that industrial age approach does not work and often does harm as it psychologically increases dependence on outside motivators and negates free will, creativity and thinking skills.

So, Glucksberg did another experiment similar to the first, where he presented the problem in a slightly different way. This time the tacks were lying on the table, outside the box.

    Figure 3: The Alternative candle problem

Attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table – same rules apply. 1^st group: we're timing for normal population performance. 2^nd group: we're giving you sweet carrots. What happened this time? This time, the carrot group kicked the other groups behind.

Rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks - where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind. For tasks like this, a narrow focus, where you just see the goal right there and zoom straight ahead to it - they work really well. But for the real candle problem, you don't want to be thinking like this. The solution is not obvious. The solution lies in the fringes of your mind. You need to be looking there, outside the box. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our creativity, and keeps out thinking and strategies inside the box. Those creativity and intuition skills that help solve society’s Wicked Problems.

Do the problems that you face have a clear set of rules, and a single solution? No. The rules are mystifying. The solution, if it exists at all, is surprising and not obvious. Everybody in this room is dealing with their own version of the candle problem. For candle problems of any kind, in any field, those “if-then” rewards, the things around which we've built our education system, do not work. To make matters even more complicated, in the real world we need to listen and collaborate with other people – increasing levels of complexity by the 10^th degree.

We have to redefine what education systems are about, the methodologies we use and the outcomes not that we need, but that will work in 21c spaces. We are not educating rats for the industrial age factories, but human beings for a needed sustainable and innovative world.

Design Thinking with its steps of Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test; is ideally placed to take into account what the world wants and needs, in a bottom-up innovation methodology that grants autonomy, purpose and Mastery.

Does it not make sense that this methodology could also be a template for not just education systems, but classroom pedagogy and andragogy?