WICS

AMRA MOHAMMED
Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity
Synthesized
Memory and analytical skills are considered to be central to
intelligence, and they are certainly important for school and
life success.
But are they sufficient?
 Smart People
Smart people can be especially susceptible to allowing certain fallacies in their
thinking that less intelligent people may be less likely to commit:
1. Unrealistic optimism- thinking that, whatever they do, it will work out all right
2. Egocentrism- thinking that the whole world revolves around them
3. Omniscience- thinking they know everything
4. Omnipotence- thinking they can do whatever they want
5. Invulnerability- thinking they can get away with anything
6. Ethical disengagement- thinking that ethical behavior is important for others but
not for themselves.
 Assumptions about WISDOM
◦ Wise persons have a good intellect
and superior reasoning ability
◦ Wisdom is a virtue, or pattern of
behavior that society values highly
◦ Wise people have expeditious use
of information to make
discernment judgment
◦ Wisdom is a good, personally
desirable condition
 Comparison
Intelligence Wisdom
 Intelligence
Is the capacity to acquire and apply
knowledge.
Is the amount of information
gathered in the human brain
Recall, analysis and use of
information
Executive
Wisdom
Is the accumulated knowledge that gives
the ability to discern or judge what is
true, right, or lasting; gives the common
sense; gives insight.
Is the intelligence that we gain in the
process of learning from the mistakes
that we commit.
Understanding of its presupposition and
meaning as well as its limitation
Judicial
 What is Wisdom?
Wisdom is the application of intelligence, creativity, and knowledge
as mediated by values toward the achievement of a common good
through a balance among
◦ Intrapersonal,
◦ Interpersonal,
◦ Extra-personal interests,
over the short and long terms, to achieve a balance among:
◦ Adaptation to existing environments,
◦ Shaping of existing environments,
◦ Selection of new environments
To be wise:
Intrapersonal interests: are concerned with self. These interests might
include the desire to increase self-regard, be happier, make more money,
learn more, increase one's spiritual well-being, increase one's power, and
so forth.
Interpersonal interests might be quite similar, except as they apply to
other people rather than oneself. These might include a desire to enhance
one's popularity or prestige, establish a family, make friends, and so on.
Extra-personal interests might include contributing to the welfare of one's
school, helping one's community, contributing to the well-being of one's
country, or serving God, and so forth.
To be wise:
What you do has to be ethical
All that one does to:
◦ adapt to environments (to make yourself a better fit to your
environment),
◦ shape environments (to make the environments a better fit to you),
◦ select new environments (to find new environments that are a better fit
for you).
◦ Must honor ethical considerations regarding self, environment, and
others.
Primary sources of affecting the balance processes of
adaptation, selection, and shaping environments
◦Goals
◦Balancing of responses to environmental contexts
◦Balancing of interests
◦Balancing of short- and long-terms
◦Values: place and time
 What is WICS
Is a model of a possible common basis for identifying positive educational
leaders, both developed and in development.
A great educational leader uses:
Creativity to generate possible depictions and solutions of problems;
Analytical Intelligence to evaluate the quality of these depictions and solutions;
Practical Intelligence to implement decisions and persuade others of their value;
and
Wisdom to ensure the decisions help achieve a common good through
precognition
 What does it mean by Synthesis
1. The basic relationships between these components
2. The role of components- (metacomponents, performance
components, knowledge-acquisition components)
3. Coping with novelty skills
4. Practical skills
 Assessment of WICS

Practical Analytical Creative Wisdom

Persuasive Logical Sophisticate Ethical Value

Time Analytically Long & short
Original
Place sound time
Balance of
Organized Appropriate
Human interests
Resources Balanced Compelling Common good
 WICS: Instruction, and Assessment
WICS can serve as a basis for teaching and learning by combining the
processes of wisdom, intelligence, and creativity in an integrative,
transdisciplinary way.
 The importance of developing wisdom in schools
1. Schools should help students develop wise use of knowledge
2. Teaching wise thinking has always been implicit in curricula in that
things learned in school can often be applied to positive ends. So
it seems reasonable to make explicit what has previously been
implicit. (Do you think wisdom should be taught directly?)
3. Schools that consciously impart wisdom to students are likely to
produce adults that make better decisions and choices
 Key Tenets of WICS
- Knowledge is insufficient for wisdom and it does not guarantee satisfaction or
happiness. Wisdom seems a better vehicle for attaining these goals.
- Wisdom supports a mindful way to enter well-considered values into important
judgments. One cannot be wise and at the same time impulsive or mindless in
one's judgments.
- Wisdom represents an avenue to creating a better, more harmonious world.
Wise leaders and citizens are more likely to avoid mistakes that leaders and
citizens who are just smart.
- Students, who later will become parents and leaders, are always part of a greater
community and hence will benefit from learning to judge rightly, soundly, or justly
on behalf of their community
 Principles of Teaching
Instruction and assessment should enable students to:
◦Identify and capitalize on strengths
◦Identify and correct or compensate for weaknesses
◦How to think rather than what to think
Teaching Through:
◦Dialectical thinking- Memory/analysis--thesis, antithesis,
synthesis and closure
◦Dialogical thinking- exchange of ideas, open
◦Balanced thinking
◦ Over time
◦ Over place
◦ Over situations
Can we teach for WICS?
 WICS Instructional and Assessment
Techniques
Balance using instruction and assessment that is
◦Memory-Based
◦Analytically-Based
◦Creatively-Based
◦Practically-Based
◦Wisdom-Based
 Discussion
Think about one lesson/ concept you are teaching in your
classroom and how can you apply the WICS model in your
teaching…
What challenges do you anticipate facing in
attempting to teach with the WICS model?
The challenge of teaching WICS in school
◦Standardized testing doesn't assess wisdom
◦Teachers aren’t trained to teach for wisdom
◦Is not something that school systems and
parents are likely to support.
◦Integrating teaching for wisdom into the
curriculum rather than presenting it
separately.
 Advantages of Teaching for WICS
◦Enables students to capitalize on strengths and remediate
or compensate for weaknesses
◦Enables students to encode learning material more deeply
and elaborately, and in multiple ways
◦Motivates students more strongly
◦Enables students to learn and think in an integrative way
◦Prepares students better for real life as mindful
individuals.
References
Sternberg, R. (2004). What Is Wisdom and How Can We Develop It? The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 591, 164-174. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4127641
Conversations on Wisdom: Robert J. Sternberg. By Jean Matelski Boulware