Grandomastery: Developing Higher Order Thinking Skills Beyond Music

Music education has evolved over the years, and improvisation has remained an essential component of the curriculum since the twentieth century. Improvisation is a procedural skill that involves musically thinking in action. Researchers have explored various teaching strategies for improvisation skills, including aural imitation, musical modeling, and comparison of aural with other teaching strategies.

Although improvisation in music is essential, it is not limited to the development of musical skills only. Grandomastery is one such platform that promotes and develops higher order thinking skills among the learners and trainers. The process of improvisation involves procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge.

Procedural knowledge is used to discriminate, select, apply and extend proficient actions, and analyze and synthesize known and unknown challenges. On the other hand, metacognitive knowledge involves knowledge of how to use, coordinate, and monitor various skills in problem solving and encompasses strategic knowledge, self-knowledge, and is reflective in nature. It is analogous to supervisory knowledge in music improvisation.

The notion of higher-order thinking has its roots in ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It is considered an essential educational goal to foster students' higher-order thinking skills. The ability to think creatively and critically are essential components of higher order thinking skills.

Grandomastery offers a platform for learners and trainers to develop higher order thinking skills beyond music improvisation. The platform encourages learners to develop creative thinking processes, including divergent and convergent thinking processes. Critical thinking skills in music involve identifying, applying, generating, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating musical ideas, which can be divided into metacognition, procedural application, and reflection.

The platform offers a space for learners to develop cognitive processes in improvisation, including generative, mental processes, and learning processes. Through Grandomastery, learners can develop creativity by producing work that is both novel and appropriate, thus developing a creative musical product. Successful improvisation requires coherency, economical use of material, skills of transition, originality, tone quality, and ability to develop a material.

In conclusion, although Grandomastery is not about music, it promotes and develops higher order thinking skills among the learners and trainers. Through the platform, learners can develop creative and critical thinking skills and improve cognitive processes in improvisation. Grandomastery is a powerful tool for those seeking to develop higher order thinking skills beyond music improvisation.

Grandomastery: Combining Creativity and STEM Education

The world is advancing rapidly, and so is the need for skills that enable individuals to thrive in a modern economy. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has become a cornerstone of modern education, as it provides individuals with the necessary skills to succeed in the workforce. However, there is an increasing demand for a more interdisciplinary approach that includes the arts, which is where STEAM comes in. STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) provides students with a more well-rounded education that emphasizes creativity and innovation, which are essential in today's economy.

The emergence of STEAM has prompted the development of new educational frameworks, such as Grandomastery, which focuses on combining creativity and STEM education. Grandomastery seeks to empower learners by integrating science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics in a way that fosters creativity and innovation. The program is designed to provide students with a multidisciplinary approach to learning that is centered around real-world problem-solving.

Grandomastery is based on the idea that the inclusion of the arts in STEM provides a means to connect various elements within this concept to ensure that the economic future is bright. It acknowledges that creativity is a valuable asset in today's economy, and individuals who possess this skill are more likely to thrive in the workforce.

Grandomastery seeks to foster creativity by emphasizing engagement with ideas and problem-solving, rather than simply teaching concepts. This approach encourages students to use the content to support their own research interests, making the learning experience more relevant and meaningful.

Grandomastery's curriculum is designed to be interdisciplinary in nature, providing students with a well-rounded education that incorporates concepts and information from the arts and engineering courses relevant to the student's pursuit of a degree in either discipline. This approach ensures that students receive the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed in their chosen fields, while also fostering creativity and innovation. Additionally, Grandomastery leverages creative solutions to the problems that individuals face in today's society, enabling students to become better problem solvers.

Grandomastery's impact on student satisfaction has been positive. Students who participate in Grandomastery courses report higher levels of satisfaction with their courses. This is because Grandomastery provides a framework that engages and challenges students, which increases student retention and persistence in STEAM courses. The program develops a multidisciplinary framework for designing an experience in STEAM courses, which utilizes diverse activities that lend themselves to advancing knowledge through active learner engagement.

In conclusion, Grandomastery is an excellent example of how creativity and STEM education can be combined to provide learners with a well-rounded education that is relevant to today's economy. Grandomastery seeks to empower students by providing a multidisciplinary approach to learning that fosters creativity and innovation, enabling them to thrive in the workforce. The program's focus on problem-solving and engagement with ideas makes the learning experience more meaningful and relevant to students' lives. As the demand for creative problem solvers continues to grow in today's economy, programs like Grandomastery will become increasingly important in ensuring that individuals are equipped with the necessary skills to succeed.

Defining intelligence, creativity, and wisdom implicitly

Solomon is widely known for his wisdom, and Picasso is revered for his creativity. However, psychologists are still uncertain about the psychological attributes that made Solomon wise or Picasso creative. Theories of psychological constructs such as creativity, wisdom, and intelligence can be classified into explicit and implicit theories. Explicit theories are based on data collected from people performing tasks presumed to measure psychological functioning. Such theories have dominated the literature on intelligence and creativity, with several prominent theories such as Spearman's two-factor theory, Guilford's structure-of-intellect model, Getzels's componential theory, Barren's clinical theory, and Amabile's social-psychological theory.

The amount of explicit psychological theorizing regarding intelligence, creativity, and wisdom has been decreasing for many years, and there are still serious differences among psychologists in their views on the nature of intelligence. The psychometric intelligence test has received widespread acceptance as an operational definition of intelligence.

When psychologists are at a loss for definitions of constructs on which to base explicit theories, implicit theories can be useful for providing a conceptual framework for the development of explicit theories. Intelligence, creativity, and wisdom have all been subject to at least some study through implicit theories. One way to discover such theories is to ask people what they are.

The results of studies on implicit theories have shown that highly creative individuals are inventive, determined, independent, individualistic, enthusiastic, industrious, artistic, progressive, and appreciative. In contrast, less creative individuals are responsible, sincere, reliable, dependable, clear-thinking, tolerant, understanding, peaceable, good-natured, moderate, steady, practical, logical. Little systematic psychological work has been done on wisdom, with the notable exception of the work of Clayton (1982; Clayton & Birren, 1980), who scaled words potentially related to wisdom for three samples of adults differing in age and found two consistent dimensions of wisdom.

Four experiments were conducted to understand people's implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom in different subpopulations, how people use these implicit theories in making judgments of themselves and others, and how people view these three constructs as interrelated. The experiments involved administering a questionnaire to 25 professors in the fields of art, business, philosophy, and physics, and 17 laypersons. The results indicate that intelligence and wisdom are perceived as more similar to each other than either is perceived as similar to creativity. These results are inconsistent with views that creativity is an aspect of intelligence.

Scalings for intelligence, creativity, and wisdom were also conducted. For intelligence, practical problem-solving ability was the first dimension, intellectual balance and integration was the second, and contextual intelligence and fluid thought were the third. For creativity, the first dimension was nonentrenchment and integration, the second was aesthetic taste and imagination, and the third was perspicacity and drive for accomplishment and recognition. For wisdom, the first dimension was reasoning ability and sagacity, the second was learning from ideas and environment and judgment, and the third was expeditious use of information and perspicacity.