This episode explores how integrative thinking helps students navigate tensions instead of choosing between opposing ideas. Nogah Kornberg shares practical tools like the pro-pro chart and a five-stage problem-solving journey that builds creativity, empathy, and critical thinking. The conversation highlights how embracing “creative friction” in classrooms can empower students to generate innovative solutions to real-world challenges.
Resources
- I-Think website
- I-Think Challenge Kits
- I-Think Case Studies
- Creating Great Choices by Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel
- Email: connect@i-thinktogether.org
About Nogah Kornberg
As strategist, facilitator and coach, Nogah’s work sits at the intersection of thought leadership and action. She is a trusted partner to leaders and educators navigating complex, system-level challenges. As Co-Executive Director of I-Think, she creates solutions that translate aspirations into lasting impact.
Nogah wrote the first textbook in Integrative Thinking, I-Think Facilitator Notebook. She also led the team designing I-Think’s first board game, I-Think Different: About Social Media, the Well-being Mini Kit and Challenge Kits. With school boards, Nogah has designed School Improvement Frameworks used by every leader in the Board, worked with Indigenous Education Teams to co-create their strategy and identify areas for action, and facilitated the Vision, Mission and Strategy with students for Central Technical School. She is currently working on a podcast with them.
Nogah received her Bachelor of Education and Master of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. She holds a Honours Bachelor of Arts from Trent University in History and Indigenous Studies.
Transcript
Theme Song
Talking about innovation in teaching and education, Popular Podagogy. Discussions that are topical and sometimes philosophical, Popular Podagogy. Popular Podagogy.
Chris Carlton
Hi there. Thanks for joining us and welcome to another episode of Popular Podagogy, where we try to bring big ideas in teaching and education to life. I'm your host, Chris Carlton, and this podcast is being brought to you by the Faculty of Education at Queen's University. Welcome to our podcast. In this episode, I am excited to be speaking with Noga Kornberg, who is a strategist, facilitator, coach, and co-executive director of iThink, an organization that teaches the pedagogy of integrative thinking. using creative friction between ideas as a gateway to innovative and skill-building. I think's mission is to change the educational experience for young people so that they have the skills, tools, and agency to ignite change. And that I can get behind. Noga received her Master of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Through her I Think affiliation, she is working with students, teachers, and leaders using pedagogy of integrative thinking. The program teaches frameworks for navigating tensions that have been used in K-12 across all subject areas, grounded in curriculum and transferable skills, and with leaders of school boards as well as outside of education. Noga, welcome to our podcast.
Nogah Kornberg
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you.
Chris Carlton
So am I. read that your pedagogy to navigate tensions is based on 15 years of research at iThink, working with students, teachers, leaders, using pedagogy of integrative thinking. I also read that you led the creation of the iThink Facilitator Notebook, the first textbook in integrative thinking and challenge kits. So I feel my first question is being asked of the right person. Can you explain the I Think program and how it works? And I know that's a big question, but we need to start with that.
Nogah Kornberg
So we are an education charity and we offer learning opportunities and resources to teach how to navigate tension productively. Our ideas around tension really stem from a methodology called integrative thinking. It was first written about by Roger Martin in the book The Opposable Mind, and then again in Creating Great Choices, which he co-authored with Jennifer Riel. And integrative thinking, the formal definition of it is it's the ability to face constructively the tension of opposing models, and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, we're generating a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the individual models but is superior to each. What does that really mean? Is that instead of making a trade-off, because we often talk about leadership or too often leadership does talked about as I make the tough decisions, I make the tough trade-offs. For us, it's not about making the tough trade-off. It's how do you take the best of A and the best of B and use those as the basis to create path C and a new path forward. And so it means for us that creativity doesn't start from a blank sheet of paper. Instead, it's actually about rigorously understanding the logics behind the models on the table through different perspectives. And Roger, when he was building the methodology at the Rotman School of Management, really leaned on experts in so many different fields, including research of learning, psychology, behavioral economics, to understand how and why we do this. And our work at iThink has been taking the methodology of integrative thinking and saying, what might this look like in K-12 education? For us, we did that by developing a journey. We call it the real-world problem-solving journey. And it has five stages, four of which teachers are very used to doing in the classroom. So we start by framing the problem. What is their best understanding of the problem this moment? We then move into ignite curiosity. Igniting curiosity is about the knowledge building, the empathy building that is required for students to become informed problem solvers. The third stage is really what's new for a lot of teachers who learn with us. This we call drive for insights. And we called it Drive for Insights because if our current understanding of the problem, if our current mental models were enough to solve it, you don't need this process. You have a solution you're happy with. But leaders and students use this methodology when their current models don't see them a way through. And so it starts with saying, what are the opposing models? What's A&B? We make them a little bit more extreme so we can learn from them. We then say, from whose perspective should we be considering this problem? And then we do really the heart of integrative thinking, which is a pro-pro chart. What are the benefits of both models through those different perspectives? When we have our pro-pro chart, we then start asking questions to examine those models. Teachers are very used to asking critical thinking questions in the classroom. This is the place for those questions to come out. And then we also offer our set based on the research that Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel did. And you funnel that insight, that new understanding into a reframe question. And that's the drive for insights step. We then move to build better models. This is the creativity piece where we say, what's new, what's possible, what are some new ideas we have? And then we end with celebrate success because this type of work is very hard. And if we don't celebrate, we're in a lot of trouble. So we actively weave that into our process. And so for the classroom, we have three different resources that can help teachers bring this methodology into the classroom. We have a game, it's a card game. And the goal is to have a deeper problem-solving generative conversation. We have one game. We collaborated with the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, and it's on the topic of social media. We have a mini kit, and this is to engage in a half-day real-world problem-solving experience on an issue that matters to students. We're launching it this spring on the theme of well-being. And then we have our challenge kits, and those are a unit problem-solving experience using integrative thinking and using this methodology. And we have kits for Black History Month or African Heritage Month focusing on Afrofuturism, artificial intelligence, Remembrance Day, and well-being. And so really when we think about I think in the program that we run, we believe that schools are safe spaces for young people to really learn how do you create solutions for challenges they don't even know will exist. And so tension is our invitation into creating remarkable possibilities.
Chris Carlton
As a teacher, I was going through your games and challenge kits, and they're just incredible to be able to bring those into the classroom and let the students, as you said, see real-world problems and the solving journey on issues that matter to the students, things that they're already thinking about. I also, when you've talked about the pro-pro chart, thinking about the different perspectives, it's such an important aspect of making sure that we have empathy towards everybody that's involved in the program. And because I'm a science guy, that igniting the curiosity is such a major thing for me as well. And I'm writing notes as fast as I can here, Nova. You teach frameworks for navigating tension. and you call it the creative friction between ideas. How can teachers build the skill of noticing or discovering those usable tensions in their own program?
Nogah Kornberg
What's nice about the answer to this question is that it's not just teachers. Many people of all ages dislike noticing tension because we don't know how to navigate them. Tension makes us really uncomfortable. And we often have people who talk about being conflict averse. And so one of the things that really helps is the recognition that tension can be useful. And so it's not a bad thing. to start noticing them and naming them around us. One of the things through the research that Roger, Jennifer did along with our larger team, is that there are common tensions all around us. And so we always have to find the new ones, but we look at tensions like customization versus standardization, breadth versus depth, status quo versus change, top down versus bottom up. So knowing that there are patterns, the kinds of tensions that exist, And then being more comfortable with naming that and saying, this is a tension here is early first steps in gaining the confidence because it really is practice. And one of my favorite stories is having a grade three student who was learning in Kristen Slingler's classroom. They had been learning the pro-pro, learning about tensions. And one day the student brought in a newspaper article and said, we should do a pro-pro on this. And so it's a skill that eight-year-olds with practice because they know it's useful, can build very quickly. And so for us, the tension is everywhere. And if I may share a couple of examples, in kindergarten, there was a teacher, Rachel Chang, and prior to having done professional learning with us, they were doing a unit on nature and a unit on snails. And they had brought snails into the classroom to learn about. And one of the students pipes up and says, My parents said that we leave nature in nature. And not that much later, Rachel Chang had come into our professional learning and she said, this is the perfect thing to do attention around. So she offered her kindergarten students, how do we learn about nature? Do we bring nature into the classroom or do we go into nature to learn about it? In a grade one class, this was Adam Smith. He saw that every classroom, there's a limit of the number of manipulatives you have, the number of building materials you have. And there was always these fights in the classroom around, well, when do we tear them down? Because we need to use them again. And so for his class, he offered them the tension of, we keep everything we've built. Once we run out of material to build, we don't build anymore. We'll find other ways to learn. or we take everything down the day we build it. Those were the opposing models he got. And then in middle school, a middle school example is from Jason Watt, who they had a big problem with graffiti in the washrooms. And so for him and through conversation, he realized that there was something they were already doing, which was the status quo, which is educating students. If we talk to students, tell them about it, why it's wrong, the impact, that was the status quo, the change model would be a policing model, where there would be one key to the bathroom, only one student would be allowed in at a time with the key, an adult would have to check in between. And both of these were bad because that's not how schools work. It's not feasible. But for him, he was able to look at the graffiti problem at the school and say, well, we're already educating what would be the opposite and that would be controlling behavior. And they used the pro pro to come up with something that looked very far from both of those actually. And so that's another example of an opposing model in a school.
Chris Carlton
It's so amazing when you talk about right down to kindergarten. up to middle school, being trained on integrative thinking. And then, as you said, building lifelong skills. So it's not just in education, it's in life in general. How can we apply that and how can we help make a better world from it? You've talked about it, and I strongly believe that we need to train a generation of young people with the ability to navigate tensions. Tensions are always going to be there. and get them to create in the face of a world that too often demands quick and rigid answers. This is such an important topic for students and teachers alike and business people like the way it developed from. My final question is this, and I challenge you to try to answer it in a couple questions. Even though we've talked about it, what would be a first step for a teacher who wants to introduce integrative thinking into their classroom program?
Nogah Kornberg
For us, when we think of integrative thinking, there are different components, which is what is the mindsets that are involved, what are the tools or the frameworks, and then what are the learning experiences? And so when it comes to the mindset, a big piece for us is I have a view worth hearing, but I might be missing something. How do you name that mindset? How do you literally put it up in the classroom? How do you have experiences for students around it? Because what we're doing there is teaching students about their own mental models and how to be curious around the mental models of other people. And then with the tools, we have a whole suite of them, but obviously I've talked about the pro-pro today. And so find a fun and friendly pro-pro. It doesn't have to be a whole unit. It doesn't have to be complicated, but something like seating arrangements. Do we choose or does the teacher choose? Do we sit with the same people all year or do we switch every week? Or you can look at, we've seen this happen in a lot of civics classrooms, how to best make change. Do you advocate for policy change or do you do community-based action? And then you can use the Pro/Pro to have a different kind of conversation. Just last week, I was at a school, and one of the teachers, Rachel Rosen, came and had just done a Pro/Pro with her students around Canva versus Photoshop. And having enabling that conversation as a different way of talking about the different platforms. And the last thing I would say is to continue to offer students opportunities where they actually don't know the answer. Like you as the adult in the room genuinely does not know the answer. And it's been one of the things I've most enjoyed in working with, I think, for the last 15 years is when students come looking for me to have the answer and I can genuinely say, you've thought more about this than I have. I don't know. But why don't I sit down and we can ask some questions and we can dig in together, right? We have the role as facilitator and as coach. but not as the answer holder. And for us, and I think for me really, that focusing on tensions is helping young people understand and see pluralism and diversity, see the differences between their models and the ones that are very different from theirs as a gateway to remarkable possibilities. And there are many ways to foster that in a classroom, in a school, and in school boards.
Chris Carlton
Canva versus Photoshop. I think I could have had that activity with my own teacher candidates. So that's interesting. I love that you said, find a fun and friendly pro-pro, something that relates to the kids and start there. And then the last statement, something that you don't actually know the answer to. That brings out that creativity and you're all working from the same vantage point and you're building towards something. I think it's just amazing. Noga, I've gone through your website, and I'm going to strongly encourage all of our readers to go onto your website. You're going to provide us with additional information on the podcast website as well. This has been a really exciting conversation for me, and I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here. And I know this isn't going to be our last conversation, as I want to dig deeper into this program as well. So thank you so much for being a part of this podcast today.
Nogah Kornberg
Thank you very much for having me and for everybody listening. I hope that through ideas like the ProPro, you can find joy in the messiness of learning. And so thank you very much for having me on the podcast.
Chris Carlton
Thank you. And that does it for another episode of Popular Podagogy. Again, thank you to our amazing guest educator, Noga Kornberg. I hope you take the time to visit our podcast website and view some of the additional information available there. Josh, as always, where can our listeners subscribe to make sure they don't miss any of our popular Podagogy podcasts? Yeah, if you like what you hear, please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the CFRC website, the Faculty of Education website, and pretty much any place you get your podcasts. Please don't forget to check out our Queen's Faculty of Education website and search for Popular Podagogy for additional resources. that's it from myself, Chris Carlton, and our incredibly talented and resourceful podcast team of Josh Fine and Erin York. Stay healthy, stay safe, and stay connected. And we will see you next time for another episode of Popular Podogy.