What is 'make the pie' learning?

Have you ever been to a workshop or presentation and been given a handout while they present a slide show but you’ve spent the time daydreaming about all the things you’d rather be doing? Or have you ever been asked to write something down that was dictated to you only to promptly forget what you had written?

This kind of learning is like being served a pie. The analogy of a ‘pie’ is helpful because pies come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors—sweet and savory—and we can all imagine being handed a pie. In this learning approach, the pie is served to a passive recipient. The recipient of the pie has no active role in making or even cutting the pie. They might eat it, but they don’t gain any understanding of how it was made. Even if it’s delicious, it’s entirely forgettable—it’s not their pie.

Let’s think about what ‘make the pie’ learning might feel like. Traditional learning experiences are more about serving the pie – and handing out the answers – rather than letting learners dig in and make the pie themselves.

In a well-designed learning environment, no two ‘pies’ should be the same and everyone should have their own pie that they have proudly designed and made for themselves.

My ‘make the pie’ philosophy, is encouraging a hands-on and interactive approach to learning. My ‘make the pie’ philosophy is all about getting people to mix, blend and bake the ingredients themselves. In a well-designed learning experience, people should feel like they have been elbow-deep in the recipe of acquiring new skills, feel confident to combine their own ‘ingredients’ of ideas and leave with an experiential understanding of how things come together.

“She really makes us think for ourselves. I am getting more confident at problem-solving and I like how she doesn’t tell us the answers.”

What’s in the Batter?

I’m not making up this whole pie thing. It’s just my way of explaining pedagogy (teaching-science geekery) to people who don’t love jargon as much as me. The ‘make the pie’ philosophy is a way to re-imagine a workshop session as a pie-making extravaganza. Instead of handing everyone a finished pie (complete with crust and all), participants might get a basket of ingredients – flour, butter, fruit, maybe a pinch of sugar. Then it’s their job to mix, knead, and taste-test as they go. This is active learning that fosters trial and error, fast-failing and iteration, collaboration and communication and a lot more too… And the making of the pie is backed up with a solid lineup of learning theories:

• Constructionist Theory: Inspired by Seymour Papert, this approach invites learners to build their own understanding. Just as they’d experiment with different amounts of sugar or spices, they’re encouraged to “construct” knowledge by trying things out and learning from what doesn’t go as planned just as they also learn from what does go as planned. Applying this theory also builds resilience and critical thinking skills.

• Constructivist Theory: Constructivism embraces the idea that learning is a social recipe – we all bring different ingredients, and when we mix with others and talk about what we are doing and why we are doing it, we can create something unique. This means collaboration, discussion, and the freedom to add a little ‘seasoning’ of one’s own ideas on the table is encouraged. This also fosters creativity, community, agency and a sense of ownership of the learning AND encourages people to bring prior knowledge and experience as a valued foundation to any new learning. Key players in constructivist theory are Bruner and Vygotsky.

• Experiential Learning: If you can imagine each step of designing a recipe as a hands-on experience then this is experiential learning. In my ‘make the pie’ learning experiences, learners are constantly doing, making, and problem-solving with me as an expert guide on the side. This isn’t about a teacher telling students what to think or do but about them figuring it out and arriving at a new understanding with expert guidance.

Why Mixing Matters More Than Memorising

In a lot of learning experiences, we’re too focused on presenting the perfect pie – giving answers and ticking boxes – that we skip the mixing stage altogether. But here’s the secret: it’s in the mixing, kneading, and experimenting where the real learning magic happens. Research shows that active learning is what makes concepts stick. When people have a chance to build their understanding, they’re far more likely to remember it. When they make the pie, they’ll talk about what they made AND want to make more pies too.

Letting learners “make the pie” empowers them to feel like they own the final product because, in a very real way, they do. They’ve rolled up their sleeves and tried out the skills in a controlled, playful setting, so they’re prepared to replicate it in real life.

What Does a ‘Make the Pie’ Workshop Look Like?

When you come to one of my sessions, you’re not sitting and waiting for the ‘perfect recipe’ to appear on a slide. You’re gathering ingredients, mixing things up, and working with a team to see how it all comes together. You might start with a challenge and work out how to fix it – just like you would in a real world situation. You’ll leave not only with new knowledge but with the know-how to apply it.

1. Choose Your Ingredients: Participants can select the skills or concepts they want to explore with different options that are differentiated and designed to meet different skill levels.

2. Mix It Up: Everyone has the chance to try new approaches, exchange ideas, and learn by doing in their own time and way – like everyone adding sprinkles and tweaks to a given recipe.

3. Bake Together: There will also be opportunities for collective problem-solving and sparking and capturing ideas.

4. Eat and Reflect Together: While the catering is usually up to you, great learning experiences require some critical reflection. We’ll talk about what was most valuable, most effective, most engaging and most impactful so that we can champion these ingredients again in the next workshop.

Making the Pie means that learning is a process of experimenting, ‘tasting’, mixing up solutions and seeing what works. The ‘Make the Pie’ philosophy promotes a ‘can-do’ mindset – because participants were not handed the answers. The answers were made by them.

Ready to Start Mixing?

So next time you’re looking at a workshop or training session and you see a slide deck and a handout with readymade answers, rethink it and try a ‘make the pie’ recipe for success that’s interactive, memorable, and customised.

Because the best learning isn’t served – it’s stirred, seasoned, and baked with everyone’s minds doing the mixing. Like the sound of this kind of pie? You know where to find me.

Don the black hat! A thinking strategy for doing things better

New Zealand is currently faced with a worrying economic downturn. There are additional threats on the horizon such as the rapid developments of AI, impacts of Globalisation, looming international conflict expansion and environmental disasters due to climate change just to name a few. We turn our faces to the light and try to look for moments of brightness in the news and, particularly in the education sector and public sectors, it feels very dark indeed. Where is the light?

In these situations, it is useful to put on a black hat after Edward De Bono.

What is Black Hat Thinking?

Black hat thinking is a a way to adopt a deliberately pessimistic and cautious approach to problem-solving and decision-making with all of the ‘worstest’ superlative outcomes that we can think of. It means that we get to focus on identifying potential risks, problems, and consider of the possible negative outcomes. It is one of the six thinking styles in Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats model.

Why is it useful?
Black hat thinking encourages a kind of healthy skepticism. A lot of technology has been touted as ‘the next best thing’ for example and then it has quickly turned into a bubble that has popped more quickly than we might have predicted. Some examples of these are the dot.com bubble or the open plan classroom bubble - some may say, too, the AI bubble but this has not yet popped. (More on this later). This type of thinking is useful for carefully predicting and examining any potential flaws and weaknesses which ends up being a very useful prediction and forecasting tool.

Logical Analysis
While it might often be perceived as negative and ‘red penning’ any new and exciting prospects, black hat thinking is not about being pessimistic for its own sake. Another way of understanding it is as a useful way to critically analyse new systems/approaches/tools as a risk assessment process to ensure that any potential risks or threats are identified so that some safeguards can be put in place. Black hat thinking means that teams can anticipate and prepate for possible challenges.

Reverse brainstorming

My favourite way to facilitate Black Hat Thinking is with a reverse brainstorm. This means we look at how to do the opposite of whatever goal it is that we are striving to achieve. “How can we ensure that all of our managers fail?” or “How can we make sure that students never learn to read?” or “How can I become the worst leader of all time?” are some fun examples to play with. In one particularly memorable example in a secondary school context we reverse brainstormed “How can we make sure our students are unprepared for the future?” and there were some shocking truths suddenly up for discussion when some teachers recognised that their current pedagogy was setting kids up to fail…

The next step of a reverse brainstorm is to be as creative as possible and come up with ‘all the ways’ to make the opposite happen. Go wild. Have fun. Then review.

The final step of the reverse brainstorm is to flip the brainstorm and negate all of the negative suggestions and rephrase them as positives. If one answer for a ‘how can we become the worst leader’ brainstorm was ‘be late for all meetings’ then the solution is ‘be punctual’. The black hat thinking and using the reverse brainstorm as a facilitation method means that all of the negatives have been predicted and the opposite risk managing opportunity can be identified to inform meaningful strategic planning.

Foreseeing the rocks

If you hate the idea of a reverse brainstorm, another useful metaphor is a boat on its way to ‘some magical island outcome’. This method is great for visual thinkers. Draw a boat and draw a bunch of rocks and waves and kraken and pirates and whatever else you think might get in the way of a journey and then set about naming the hazards. What are all of the things in the way? Once this is done, you can start to strategise what your marine chart/road map might need in order to steer around those obstacles.

Both of these strategic planning experiences require the black hat to be donned - and like a black wizard’s hat, the outcomes of black hat thinking can be magical.

Black hat thinking is thinking about the weather, the rocks and the crew’s capabilities to better avoid disasters.

Making some magic

If you know where you don’t want to go, then you can forge a better path to your rightful destination. Similarly, knowing all of the bad things that ‘might’ happen, means that you can plan to avoid and manage risks accordingly.

Recently I have been working on an ‘AI in the Classroom’ rubric and black hat thinking has really helped me to consider best use case scenarios - only because I’ve spent time thinking of worst use case scenarios and then sought to fix them through reverse engineering.

The black hat brainstorm highlighted worst use of AI as ‘mindless prompting’ and ‘worksheet pumping’, ‘biased without balance’, ‘industrial model on steroids’, ‘data misusing’ and ‘environmentally disastrous’ (to name a few) which can then inform more critical analysis of how to mitigate these risks with educated, mindful, purposeful and policy-protected best uses to help me to design my self-assessment rubric. (This is coming soon).

So what kind of black hat will you wear?

Of course, you don’t need a real hat - but imagining your own black hat strategy to make better decisions in your workplace or classroom is a great thinking strategy to adopt if you want to know better to do better.

Notes on Engineering Flow

I’m exploring what flow looks like and how it can be engineered as a therapeutic tool and ‘bucket filler’ for wellbeing as well as a mode for enhancing engagement. Here are some notes on how the state of flow can be engineered for optimal learning experiences.

These days life is so busy. We are constantly tuned in, listening, viewing, filtering and processing information at a tremendous rate. As a consequence stillness and the ability to tune in to oneself in is being lost in the mess of life. Screens, billboards, traffic, office noise, classroom noise, schedules, lists, expectations (especially at this time of year just before Christmas) make it even more important to make space for a more mindful approach to learning and working.

Flow is a state coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He describes "flow" as a state of optimal experience where individuals are fully immersed in an activity, feeling a sense of energised focus, enjoyment, and fulfillment. In order to engineer a state of flow in a learning arena, we have to anticipate things that might break the flow and we need to design an activity that is neither too difficult nor too easy. (This tunes into Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development too). On the surface, designing this kind of learning experience seems easy enough - but there are layers to it that need to carefully considered in order to engineer an optimum experience.

We need to differentiate. What might be hard for one might be too easy for another so in the anticipation phase of learning design we therefore need to predict how to extend more advanced participants and enable those who might be struggling.

We need to anticipate breaks to the flow. What might go wrong? How might learning be interrupted? How can we minimise disruption and ensure that learning stays in a state of flow?

The benefits of flow in learning design are immense. Here are a few positive outcomes of engineering flow from a triangulated filter - from a learning design perspective, from an art therapy perspective and from a mindfulness/improving wellbeing perspective.

Benefits of engineering learning design to optimise flow are:

1. Increased engagement

2. Optimised productivity

3. Improved sense of wellbeing

4. Sense of timelessness (it’s always so rewarding when people want to keep going when time is up)

5. Sense of connection (if designing a collaborative flow experience)

6. Focus and awareness of the importance of process over product (agile methodology in action)

7. Increased awareness of learning as an experience/journey and not an end point

8. Increased mastery of skills

So how did all this come into play in my Flow State workshop? I used an ‘predict/anticipate, launch, explore, discuss’ model for experiential learning and here are some notes:

1. Prediction/Anticipation

   What might the learners need to succeed?

   I knew that the students would find it hard to focus for a long period of time so I set a timer and displayed it visually. I also prepared the resources ahead of time so that learning could be entered easily in the ‘launch’ phase. In this instance, I pre-drew the circles for the [personal mandala] activity because I knew that using compasses and identifying the centre of a circle might cause confusion and put the activity into the ‘too hard basket’ before we began. I also pre-marked the centres of the circles with a cross to indicate quarters and I checked that the students understood the concept of symmetry. Jargon check, learning outcomes check, barriers check, UDL check.

   What might strugglers need to be scaffolded?

   In my resource kete I also had images of variations of the finished product so that participants could see what kinds of patterns might be used. I actually held these back today as the students didn’t need it. (Also, I’ve found that often when you offer an exemplar students will emulate the exemplar rather than designing and exploring their own process).

   What materials might they require to support them?

   The anticipation phase is also important - what actions do we expect participants to be able to perform? What do they need in terms of environment and materials? Another aspect of the anticipation phase for the flow experience activity was providing a range of media. I provided different types of coloured pencils, pencils, felt tips and ink pens for exploration. Pencil sharpeners and ways to sharpen without leaving the table were also provided (getting up to sharpen a pencil can be a really dumb way to break flow needlessly).

   How might learners be extended?

   I had planned to add a sensory and psychology of colour/colour theory reflection exercise. This could be adopted as a take home worksheet or I might yet adapt it to flow state workshop 2.

2. Launch

   In the launch phase I gave a brief overview of the history of mandalas, what they are for, the magic macro/micro aspects of them with examples from the real world and how they can be used to tune in to the process of drawing. Once all of the students knew what to do I could let them go for it. The launch phase needs to be ‘what are we going to do, how are we going to do it and how will we know when we are done’ (in a nutshell).

3. Explore

   In the explore phase it’s important not to interrupt them. There needs to be no rules and full freedom to explore. Just drawing (or making or designing or brainstorming whatever the workshop needs). Just exploring. For this phase, I also provided a soundtrack of rainforest meditation low-key soundscape so that there were no rhythmic or lyrical distractions and all of the materials were shareable and within reach. Get. Stuck. In. Gloriously.

4. Summarise/Discuss

   At the end (indicated by a visual timer), we returned to conversation about how the activity went. What did we discover? What did we learn? How easy/hard was it to focus? What decisions did you make? How are those interesting or different to what you might have expected? (Etc.)

   The work of the facilitator is to explore questions to follow up with in the explore phase too… the product or the outcome is not the focus - the reflection on the process is.

The results of true flow in action are always different. Do the students have an increased sense of wellbeing? Yes. Have they explored discovery learning as a process? Yes. Have they had an opportunity to learn on their own in a parallel play environment? Yes. Is it energising? Yes. Is it fun? Yes.

In the artistry of learning design, engineering experiences to maximise flow states can be transformative for participants and the benefits of recognising the flow state and knowing how to get there again can be exponentially advantageous.

Ready to boost wellbeing and make learning more impactful by maximising flow in your organisation? Let's make it happen! Book me for a fun and impactful workshop.

• Flow-State Playground Workshop (for businesses)

  Transform your leadership style through a playful and interactive experience in a Flow-State Playground Workshop. Leaders from all backgrounds will explore the principles of flow through expertly engineered activities designed to enhance decision-making, foster innovation, and strengthen team dynamics. Participants will leave equipped to inspire and guide their teams to peak performance, all while having fun exploring a variety of playful activities. Contact me for session timing and pricing. studio@katrinawardcreative.com

• Flowcraft Playdate - (for teachers and parents)

  Explore the pedagogy of engineering flow state learning experiences to optimise engagement, improve communication and target wellbeing. Two hour workshop or Full day workshop. Contact me for pricing. studio@katrinawardcreative.com