At Spaghetti Bridge, we draw inspiration from Ron Berger, Chief Academic Officer at EL Education, in placing the creation of “beautiful work” at the heart of our approach to teaching and learning. For Berger, the idea of beautiful work is not limited to work that is solely aesthetically pleasing; instead, it is work that exemplifies in his words “care, craftsmanship and value”. Whether the beautiful work is a mathematical proof, a piece of scientific investigation, or a book of stories, what matters is that students have invested time and effort into its creation, that they have modelled the work on examples of excellence, and that they have iterated and revised the work in a cycle of feedback and improvement. This process, Berger argues, creates a culture of excellence in which less focus is given to solely covering the breadth of the curriculum and more is given to a deep investment in a focus on quality and craftsmanship.

One outcome of an approach to teaching and learning centred on the creation of beautiful work is that it supports students to be intrinsically motivated to engage with learning. This is a result of their work being connected to a concrete and tangible outcome that matters to them, which they can present to their community- peers, staff, family, professionals- as evidence of their work, achievement, and development. Unlike more traditional approaches that emphasise the necessity of external rewards to motivate learning- and punishments for less than expected engagement and progress- through the creation of beautiful work, students learn to set their own standards based on models of excellence and strive to achieve these in their final design.  It is this effort, reflection, and the ensuing pride of accomplishment that makes the work beautiful.

Beautiful work as a vehicle for deeper learning

I would argue, however, that creating beautiful work uniquely prepares students for the world of the 21st century by facilitating what is known as deeper learning.  Deeper learning can be difficult to define, but scholars  Jal Metha and Sarah Fine, provide a helpful framework in their excellent book In Search of Deeper Learning: the Quest to Remake the American High School (2019). They describe how the term was popularised by the Hewlett Foundation in 2013 and has been the subject of a substantial report by the American National Research Council’s Committee on Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills. Synthesising and building on  this and other research, Metha and Fine propose that deeper learning arises out of “powerful learning experiences” (16) that are characterised by providing opportunities for “mastery, identity, and creativity” (15). By mastery, they mean that the learning enables students to acquire knowledge and apply this across the curriculum in integrated learning experiences.  Identity in this context means the way in which students cognitively and affectively connect their learning to their sense of self and personal meaning, resulting in intrinsic motivation to learn. Thirdly, they see creativity as the way in which students take their received knowledge and apply it within a specific field in order to create something.  

This approach dissolves the false dichotomy between “knowledge” and “skills” through integrating the two into a single learning process. Deeper learning proposes that mastery of knowledge within a field of study is important, but only in so much as it facilitates students to apply this knowledge creatively to the real world and the extent to which it fosters students to have an affective connection to their learning and work. It also means that students are encouraged to apply knowledge from seemingly disparate domains into creative approaches to real-world problems.

In short, deeper learning facilitates students to take the vast trove of knowledge they have inherited from past scholarship and learning and apply this to the evolving and complex world of today and tomorrow. This means that educators are responsible for more than just transmitting knowledge to their students, but instead facilitating the way in which their students apply this knowledge through creative skill.  

The process of deeper learning through beautiful work

The principles of creating beautiful work aligns seamlessly with the principles of deeper learning and the process of creating beautiful work provides an excellent vehicle for delivering the powerful learning experiences that enable deeper learning. For example, consider a class that has set out to make a social awareness campaign around an issue that matters to them, including making a website about this issue. First of all, students would need to select a cause that matters to them (identity). Secondly, the class would need to learn about how to design and create a website, look at examples of effective websites to see what makes them effective, and research and learn about their chosen issue, possibly consulting professionals and experts as part of the process (mastery). They then would need to actually create their website, based on their learning but in a new and innovative way that meets the needs of their social issue and intended audience (creativity). And, just to be clear, their first draft will not be up to the standards required to make their website beautiful; it will take experimentation, iteration, and feedback to make it so.

Creating beautiful work, creating ourselves

Creating beautiful work is not a linear process- as they work on their beautiful work, students will discover new things that interest them, evolve their thinking, revise their planning, and learn new knowledge to overcome the barriers that arise from the process.  They will need to draw on knowledge from multiple domains and combine them in creating their beautiful work.  They will learn to be comfortable and confident in working with open questions that have no single answer, which are the types of questions that they will be facing in the world of the 21st century.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is the fact that they will have made something which they deem to be beautiful, are proud of, that they want to share with others, and reflects the way in which they have worked to develop into the person they aspire to be.

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