Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Creativity, problem-solving skills, and the ability for collaborative work are considered as key competences for mastering the challenges of the twenty-first century. Children are born with natural creativity and curiosity, but worldwide it can be observed, that these talents decrease throughout their school careers. Therefore, an interdisciplinary team with expertise in design and pedagogy investigates, whether Design Thinking in elementary schools could be a method to foster children’s creativity, problem-solving skills and collaborative work. International studies on design thinking in secondary education show promising results. Initial findings of our surveys with teachers and pilot teaching units in German elementary schools show that both the process and the principles of Design Thinking enable children to achieve a goal-oriented form of independent learning and creative problem-solving. Teachers show open-mindedness towards Design Thinking and see a high potential for its application in classroom. The main challenge will be to provide teachers with a solid understanding of Design Thinking, which enables them to apply it in a self-sufficient way, to develop confidence in their own creative capabilities and in an open learning process. Based on these findings, teacher students of the University of Education in Freiburg were trained in Design Thinking by a designer and developed learning scenarios for elementary schools. Next steps will be to implement them in classrooms and to evaluate their potential in terms of fostering twenty-first century skills with qualitative methods of empirical social research. Our paper presents the learning scenarios and discusses current results.

Presenters

Sabine Hoegsdal
Lecturer in the Institute for Everyday Life Culture, Sports and Health, Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Technology, University of Education, Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Anne-Marie Grundmeier
Senior Professor, Science/ Education, University of Education Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany