Intelligence & Creative Thinking

Successful Intelligence and Assessment:

Accessing successful intelligence is incorporated into the unit plan. The unit plan provides numerous and diverse examples over a range of applications. The example of historical events having implications for understanding current news events and spotting future political unrest  given by Sternberg and Grigorenko in their article exist in the unit plan as well (Sternberg and Grigorenko,2003).

In our unit plan, exercises are designed so that connections can be made between past events and current news. For example the decision President Kennedy made to conduct the Bay of Pigs operation could be used to see a choice about how to resolve North Korea’s continuing nuclear weapons program. Students would be asked to make a decision as the Commander in Chief based on their knowledge gained through a WebQuest.

Also, in terms of assessing successful intelligence, students are given multiple and diverse options in various forms. Sternberg and Grigorenko (2003). From students acting out a skit in class (performance); writing essays; going on a WebQuest; class discussions and playing interactive games, students are provided with multiple ways to demonstrate not only what they have learned but how to apply it.

Teaching Creatively:

Sternberg and Grigorenko discuss encouraging students to “…create, invent, discover, imagine, suppose and predict.” Sternberg and Grigorenko (p.216,2003). Our unit plan comes with many of these opportunities. There a quite a few hypothetical scenarios given where students are required to imagine if they were the ones making the difficult choices our former presidents or Supreme Court Justices. For example, based on the ruling in Korematsu v. United States student are asked if Iran attacked the United States, should all Iranian-Americans be detained like the Japanese in World War Two? In terms of discovery, students will take a WebQuest and discover the past through newly declassified information about the Bay of Pigs. The WebQuest is located here.

Creative Intelligence:

Robert Sternberg: Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Psychologist Robert Sternberg’s last prong in his Triachic theory emphasized creative intelligence in one’s capacity to deal with a new situation with both experiences they had in the past coupled with current skills they possess (Cherry, 2016). What are the different theories of intelligence?

Accordingly, in hypothetical situations such a future Korematsu scenario or the need for a covert operation, students will use the experiences of the past with the current skills they possess as to how the decision making process for the government has been dissected in the past. Having learned how different perspectives about past events change how we view them today and apply that knowledge is a fundamental tenet of successful intelligence.