Inquiry II
Inquiry Question
What skills and intelligences do students develop in Home Economics that they can apply to cross-curricular learning?
Introduction
“The elective status of textiles and clothing in the school curriculum places them in the margins of education, a space where some teachers feel they constantly have to defend their programs and explain them to parents, administrators, and students.” (Peterat, 1999) Home Economics is often viewed as an old-fashioned, gender bias, peripheral elective that no longer has a place in our modern curriculum. The research in this paper aims to dissolve the stigma and bias surrounding Home Economics. This essay will outline which skills and intelligences students develop in all of the branching areas of Home Economics. This essay will also dive into how these skills and intelligences students develop can be applied to cross-curricular learning. Specifically, this research will outline Robert J. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence and Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and how those intelligences are developed and enhanced through learning Home Economics. Secondly, we will be applying this development of skills to other subject areas and how the skills in Home Economics can help learning in other subjects. Alternatively, we will also look into how other subject areas can enhance learning in Home Economics.
Significance
“In the eyes of the school the Home Ec classes are not marginal, not central to the ‘core’ of academic knowledge, physically located on the periphery of the school building, and generally regarded as appropriate primarily for non-college bound students.” (Smagorinsky, 1996) Stereotypes often show Home Economics as an irrelevant and gender bias course. It’s important for the people who believe these stereotypes to have physical proof that Home Economics builds multiple skills and different intelligences that will help all students (regardless of their gender) in their core courses at school and application in their life at home and for their future. This research can help the future teaching population by highlighting, which areas of Home Economics are important for cross-curricular learning. It will also (hopefully) reduce some of the stigma surrounding Home Economics through knowledge and understanding. As a teacher of Home Economics, it is important to foster an environment of critical thinking and life-long learning skills, and in order to do this, the program needs to be justified to the students, administration, and members of the society. As an early educator in the British Columbia school system, this question is integral for me to develop my teaching philosophy and also to understand in what ways students develop. It is important for me to know how student intelligence develops and the significance of cross-curricular learning in the classroom.
Home Economics
Home Economics consist of three branches. The first, and often most popular is Food and Nutrition, the second is Clothing and Textiles, and the third branch is Family Studies. Historically, Home Economics professionals have always battled the prejudice against their field of study and pedagogical tactics in and outside the field of academics. (Werhan, 2004) As Werhan (2004) states; “Outsiders smell the cooking lab and see the products of the sewing lab, but the long standing prejudice colors their vision of what is truly going on in the classroom.” What Werhan is trying to say, is that most pupils will have an image of what a Home Economics classroom does, but because that image of the Home Economics classroom is just what they are seeing from the outside, they will often pigeonhole the program. As Home Economics teachers, it is important to not simply discard a facet of the program simply because it is “old-fashioned”, but rather adapt and modify our program so it stays relevant and promising for our modern society. (Werhan, 2004) “ Sewing does not always lend itself to traditional testing, and perhaps this characteristic has contributed to the misunderstanding and prejudice against the discipline.” (Werhan, 2004) The education system in British Columbia can often be seen as a simple box, and everything that fits into that box is the right way to do things. For instance, you will see many schools support a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) system of learning. Where is an applied skills classroom such as Home Economics supposed to find a place in schools such as this? Through the skill and intelligence development as seen by Gardner and Sternberg, I will show how beneficial a Home Economics classroom can be to student development. I will show this through research and through links to practice to breakdown how students are developing and in what areas.
Sternberg’s Intelligences
Robert J. Sternberg, now a professor at Cornell University in the College of Human Ecology; brought forward the idea of the Triarchic Theory of Intelligences, basing his idea upon Aristotle’s’ theories. (Owen-Wilson, 2015) Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligences describes the three areas of intelligence, but it also considers the various aspects and balances in which these intelligences can be used. (Owen-Wilson, 2015) Sternberg defines the three categories of intelligence as Analytical Intelligence, Practical Intelligence, and Creative intelligence. These intelligences are tabled in Appendix A. In Home Economics, we can see evidence of all of these intelligences throughout student development. Analytical intelligence is often seen as someone who does very well in a traditional classroom setting. (Tigner, 2000) Although we may not see many of these students in Home Economics, and we may see more of these students in the traditional STEM subjects, we can enhance analytical intelligence in our students. Through cross-curricular learning in Home Economics, we can teach a lesson in rising agents, for example. Analytical intelligence can be enhanced when we speak of the yeast in the context of food and nutrition, and then chemistry, and then biology. Yeast is not only a rising agent used in breads, but also eukaryotic microorganisms classified in the fungus family. As yeast is mixed with heat and moisture, it will evoke a chemical reaction that makes it grow and multiply. This depth of knowledge and the way it is learnt can enhance analytical intelligence in students.
Practical intelligence is “the ability to apply procedural information to everyday tasks” (Tigner, 2000). This is arguably the definition of intelligence of Home Economics as a whole. Practical intelligence applies knowledge we have learnt to the everyday world we live in. (Tigner, 2000) A very important aspect of practical intelligence is that it is probably the most individualist type of intelligence. This means that what may be useful in my life, may not be useful in yours (Tigner, 2000) So for a skill like sewing, this may be incredibly useful for me to be able to sew a whole outfit for myself and for others, but my peer may only have use for the skill to sew on a button. All of our students are very individual people and will learn and develop their intelligence knowledge in different ways; they will also need to apply this knowledge in different ways as well.
The final branch of Sternberg’s intelligence is creative intelligence. This intelligence is defined when “we encounter novel situations and when we deal with recurring circumstances” (Tigner, 2000) Creative intelligence is closely linked to the experience of the individual and the ideas they produce. People that poses creative intelligence usually do better in situations where they have little structure on constraint so they can develop their ideas. (Tigner, 2000) In Home Economics, we can enhance creative intelligence by allowing students to learn through project-based learning and giving them the autonomy on projects that will allow their creativity to blossom and their critical thinking skills to grow.
Through the use of cross-curricular learning within Home Economics, we can speculate the enhancement of the three branches of Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligences in our students’ learning. By speaking to other areas of discipline while teaching our own topics, students develop their analytical intelligence, practical intelligence, and creative intelligence. When we implement project-based learning into our classrooms, our students are developing practical and creative intelligence. The student autonomy we allow in our classrooms will allow out students to develop their creative intelligence. By using a teaching philosophy based off of these three styles of teaching, our students will further develop the intelligences defined by Robert J Sternberg.
Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences
Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard University in the area of cognition and education at the Graduate School of Education, has coined eight different areas of intelligences that differ from Sternberg’s intelligences. (Gardner, 2006) These intelligences are: Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Spatial, Musical, Naturalist, Bodily Kinesthetic, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. Further definitions can be found in Appendix B. Like Sternberg’s intelligences, these multiple intelligences are also often found in the Home Economics classroom. However, observers of the Home Economics profession have used the Gardner’s premise that “human intelligence occurs in a variety of ways that are not subject to human testing.”(Werhan, 2004) They have found that Home Economics students are engaged in skills such as problem solving, decision-making, and willingness to overcome obstacles through a variety of methods. (Werhan, 2004) Werhan (2004) tells us that in Smagorinsky’s observation of Home Economics as a subject area, he states that once assessment is decided upon, it is very hard to change. It becomes very difficult to persuade educators and their constituencies that alternative ways of learning (like Home Economics) are equally as valuable. (Werhan, 2004)
In an applied skills course such as Home Economics, different facets of the program can easily enhance Gardner’s intelligences in students. For instance, students learning knife skills in food and nutrition will be enhancing their bodily kinesthetic intelligences. A student learning of target markets and how to cater to a certain target market in fashion will develop more intrapersonal intelligence. A student growing herbs and using them in their cooking will develop their naturalist intelligence greatly. By breaking down different topics in a Home Economics class, we can clearly see what type of intelligence the student should be developing or enhancing. By improving the quality of learning in these types of programs by focusing on student intelligence development, we teach students life-long learning skills that will improve their quality of life.
Cross-Curricular Learning
Cross-curricular learning can mean learning in a singular classroom with different methods of teaching a specific subject, or it can mean teaching a specific subject by tying it into other subject areas the students may be learning outside of your classroom. (Roundy, n.d) Home Economics can easily tie into so many different subject areas like: Social Studies, History, Physics, Chemistry, Math, Science, Drama, English, Psychology, and many other subjects. It is important for students to realize that applied skills will develop their problem solving and decision-making skills that will enhance every aspect of their life. For example, a Secondary teacher attending a national teachers’ conference was talking about teaching geometry. He wanted to take sewing lessons to teach his students about quilting and how this tied into geometry. The sewing activity supported the element of scientific inquiry by incorporating decision-making and problem solving. (Werhan, 2004) This type of research will hopefully give evidence that not only can Home Economics be used to teach other subjects, but also other subjects can be used to teach Home Economics.
Take a textiles class. In this class students may learn about the colour indigo, a blue dye that has been used in our clothing before any other colour. The lesson that surrounds indigo can branch off into subjects such as history, chemistry, and biology. The history of Indigo tells us that it is the oldest dye in the world, and we have seen this blue in textiles around the world for over 3000 years. (Balfour-Paul, 2004) The chemistry of indigo show us how one plant that is fermented, compressed, make into blocks, and then powdered and mixed with a deoxidizing agent will make the fabric bright yellow while in the Indigo vat, but then turn a bright and deep blue as soon as it mixes with air. (Balfour-Paul, 2004) We look at the biology of the indigo plant and wonder why a green, leafy bush produces such a deep blue pigment. These types of questions allow students to explore a topic in a cross-curricular manner in either a Home Economics classroom, or from the perspectives of their other subject areas.
I will be implementing cross-curricular studies into my own teaching because I believe that it enriches the topic being taught, and it reinforces learning from different perspectives making it easier for a wider range of students to understand.
Links to Practice
Although the lesson plans below in Appendix C was created for a Home Economics classroom, the cross-curricular planning ingrained in it teaches students about Chemistry, Biology, History, Family Studies, and Textiles. The research charted in the above essay shows that cross-curricular learning in a project-based learning environment such as Home Economics greatly improves student intelligence development. For this reason, each lesson plan shown in Appendix C, Appendix D, and Appendix E have multiple areas of study within one topic. The projected belief from this is that learning the same thing from multiple perspectives enhances student learning, improves student intelligence development and helps the students learn the topic through multi-modality learning. This encourages critical thinking and growth mindsets within our students.
As previously stated, there is two different notable ways to execute cross-curricular learning in a classroom setting. The first is to teach a lesson in one class and ingrain different subject area knowledge within that one class. This requires a lot of knowledge and preparation for the teacher, but makes the lesson more diverse and interesting for the students. This type of lesson plan is shown through an Indigo Dye Vat Lesson Plan seen in Appendix C. The second way to implement cross-curricular learning is to teach the same topic in multiple subject areas. This makes learning more valid for the student as they are learning the same topic from multiple perspectives. It also creates repetitive learning for the student, which has proven to help the student retain the information. Outlined in Appendix C, D, and E are three lesson plans from different subject areas that show different perspectives on the same topic: an Indigo Dye Vat Lesson.
Conclusion
“Many educators now recognize that memorization of discrete facts is not highly productive knowledge, since so much information today is a few keystrokes away on the Internet.” (Pickard, 2007) How can we change our teaching toward is teaching that will foster life-long learning in our students? The research in this essay shows that with project-based, cross-curricular learning that we can improve the development of multiple intelligences that foster critical thinking. “Problem-solving occurs when a student devises a way of achieving a goal never before accomplished, often by reformulating the problem into a more familiar form, recognizing the similarity, and applying the method in solving for the new knowledge.”(Pickard, 2007) By outlining Robert J Sternberg’s Triarchic theory of intelligences and Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, we can see that the break-down of these intelligences correlate to learning development. By teaching to improve these intelligences in our students when using cross-curricular learning styles, our students will develop and enhance intelligences that will later improve the chances of the learned skills staying with the students for life. As a new educator in the British Columbia school system, my goal is to teach project-based learning in a cross-curricular style to improve students’ skills and intelligences that will foster critical thinking and life-long learning.
References
Balfour-Paul, J. (2004). indigo: a magical dye. Geographical, 76(1), 52-59. Retrieved from http://geographical.co.uk/
Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Owen-Wilson, L. (2015). Sternberg’s Views on Intelligence: The Second Principle. Retrieved from http://thesecondprinciple.com/optimal-learning/sternbergs-views-intelligence/
Peterat, L. (1999). Making textile studies matter: Inside outstanding school programs. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.
Pickard, M. J. (2007). The New Bloom’s Taxonomy: An overview for family and consumer sciences. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences Education, 25(1), 45-55.
Roundy, L. (n.d.). Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence – Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. Retrieved from http://study.com/academy/lesson/sternbergs-triarchic-theory-of-intelligence.html
Smagorinsky, P. (1996). Multiple intelligences, multiple means of composing: An alternative way of thinking about learning. NASSP Bulletin. 80(583), 11-17.
Tigner, R. B., & Tigner, S. S. (2000). Triarchic theories of intelligence: Aristotle and Sternberg.History of Psychology, 3(2), 168-176. doi:10.1037/1093-4510.3.2.168
Werhan, C., & Vollmer, J. (2004). Finding a place for tradition in the curriculum: A case study for sewing in the Ohio family and consumer sciences classroom. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences Education, 22(1), 43-57.