To Inform and Delight: Employing Synthesis for Scholarship That Shines

M. Laurel WalshWriting Faculty

Center for Student Success

Synthesis

• Overview of Five Minds by Gardner (2005)

• New Learning Paradigms

• Operational Definition of Synthesis

• Group Work

Five Minds for the Future

• Howard Gardner: Multiple Intelligences

Overview

– The disciplined mind

– The synthesizing mind

– The ethical mind

– The creating mind

– The respectful mind

The Disciplined Mind

• “…has mastered at least one way of thinking—a distinctive mode of cognition that characterizes a specific scholarly discipline, craft, or profession” (p. 3).

• A lifelong learner because “given the accumulation of new data, knowledge, and methods, she must be a lifelong student…[and] she has come to enjoy—indeed she has become passionate about—the process of learning about the world” (p. 41).

A Disciplined MindPhysics: Stephen Hawking

"If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered“ (Hawking, p. 11, 2007).

The Creative Mind: An Intersection

A. The individual (who has mastered a discipline)

B. The social field—the individuals and institutions that provide access to relevant educational experiences as well as the cultural domain in which they work

C.Opportunities to perform

Sherman Alexie• “I’ll make movies like I

write poems, knowing full well that 99.9% of the world couldn’t care less, but equally aware that a tiny little 0.1% of the world needs and loves poetry” (Alexie, 2007, p. ii).

The Creating Mind

This has not always been a prized or rewarded mode of thinking. Gardner says that creative minds “break new ground” (p. 3), but it is also that true creativity is difficult to nurture.

The Respectful Mind

“Respect for others should permeate one’s life. Most of us spend most of our waking hours at work. In our final portrait, we turn to the kind of mind that individuals should display as they pursue their vocations and fulfill their roles as citizens” (Gardner, 2006, p. 125).

Riane Eisler“Let us use our human thrust

for creation rather than destruction. Let us teach our sons and daughters that men's conquest of nature, of women, and of other men is not a heroic virtue; that we have the knowledge and the capacity to survive…” (Eisler, 1998, p. 87).

The Ethical Mind

Gardner (2006) is speaking here of “good work in the profession” (p. 128). And argues that “ethics involves a stance that is inherently more distanced than face-to-face relationships embodied in tolerance, respect, and other examples of personal morality” (p. 128).

An Ethical Mind: Bishop Tutu• “Together we will

work to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict, and inspire hope where there is despair” (Tutu, 2006, p. 17).

The Synthesizing Mind

“Intelligence is an adaptation…it is essentially an organization and its function is to structure the universe just as the organism structures its immediate environment” (Piaget, 1963, pp. 3-4)

• Evaluative skills, weighing and measuring, sorting and comparing, application beyond the scope of the immediate usage

Synthesis: The Act

“It is next to impossible to prove that a certain treatment has an effect because it is impossible to dissociate from various confounding factors such as novelty, quality of teaching, motor involvement, tactile pleasure, spatial configurations, etc.” (Gardner’s personal communication with Dr. Walter Enloe, 1993 in reference to paper folding in origami).

Synthesis is mental gymnastics. Inside your mind, you combine elements of separate material or abstract entities into one uniform concept.

Scholarship as Transformation

Synthesis is an act

• Reports from other sources without bias in new words for an informed reader

• Employs an organizational form that eases understanding for the reader

• Synthesis makes difficult material clear; it is a form of translation

• Presents information in a clear and helpful format that is useful

Synthesis in the Lit Review

• Exhaustive therefore inclusive• Avoids regressive material that falls outside the

scope of the study• Treats all studies as unique not equal• Balances quantitative and qualitative studies• Weighs and measures the research • Reflection is essential for synthesis: Take time

to consider what is confusing to you• Keep a journal of those surprising findings

Let’s Try to Synthesize!

We’ll split into three separate groups. These handouts represent material on similar topics from three separate disciplines. The groups have documents labeled either A, B, or C.

Group Work

Summarize the material in the space provided. Work quietly for the next ten-fifteen minutes to summarize the three main ideas that you find in the text that you have been given. Try not to disturb others.

Process

• Find an individual from the other two groups to attempt to turn your three summarized documents into one cohesive piece of synthesis.

• Together, come up with a few sentences that incorporates the divergent concepts and looks at them with a singular lens.

• This will take between fifteen and twenty minutes. Come back together for discussion.

In a New York Times editorial

“The central process driving this [shift away from manufacturing] is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked” (Brooks, 2008, E6).

Questions?