4.3.1 Participants and Background
The participants for the study were four classes of primary four students from a Singapore primary school. The students’average age was 9.6 years (SD¼0.6) and there were 68 male students and 78 female students. Two classes participated in the intervention (N¼81), while the other two classes (N¼66) were the comparison classes. According to the ability streaming of the school, these classes were found to be equivalent in their general academic performance. The control classes had 66 students (30 males, 36 females), and the intervention classes had in total 81 students (38 males, 43 females). As the school is promoting the use of ICT for teaching and learning through mobile technologies with the aim of fostering 21st century learning, all students are equipped with a smartphone as their personal learning device, and the students access the Internet to research for information as and when needed. The students were also supported with laptop computers on mobile carts when their teachers made arrangement for it during classroom teach- ing; and they used the computer laboratories on a weekly basis for the learning of various subjects. For the learning of Chinese language and the learning of science, specially designed lessons were conducted regularly throughout the year, supported by a suite of tools such as computerized concept maps and graphic organizers. The students were therefore familiar with use of technology for learning. The differ- ences between the intervention classes and the comparison classes for the learning of social studies will be described next.
4.3.2 Intervention
The overall curriculum focus of the primary four students’social studies was about Singapore’s history in the nineteenth century. The intervention designed for the experimental classes was to engage the students in designing a “coolies’house,”
which is a colloquial term for the living quarters of blue-collar migrant workers, situated in the historical backdrop of the beginning of nineteenth century in Singapore. The challenge was to build a house to accommodate 500 migrant workers within a piece of land measuring 600 square meters. The students worked in teams of four, playing the roles of civil engineer, health advisor, project manager, and interior designer. The project aims to activate students’prior knowledge of science (on building materials), health science education, mathematics (for com- putation of areas and budgeting), and their general knowledge. Students were briefed about the project and they clarified their roles and performed initial research in expert groups, that is, they were initially grouped according to their roles. After three sessions in the expert group, they returned to their home (project) groups to design proposals for health management, budget, building plan, and interior design.
All proposals need to be relevant to the historical time period, and the students were encouraged to use their textbooks as references for general understanding of the historical period. Outside of the classroom lessons, the students used the Knowl- edge Forum™to engage in collaborative dialogue.
The comparison classes went through the lesson as they usually would. Their lessons were on the same theme of Singapore’s history in the nineteenth century.
Interviews with teachers and the social studies coordinator found that the teachers would usually share stories about the past and supplement the textbook materials with historical footages. Frontal teaching was the main approach and students were expected to complete relevant sections of the workbook after each lesson. The total instruction time for the intervention and comparison classes was 12 double-period classroom sessions, which amounted to 12 h for each class.
4.3.3 Data Collection
Multiple forms of data were collected as part of the effort of a larger research project. For this study, the two main forms of data collected were the 21st century competencies (21 CC) survey (see next section) and the qualitative one-to-one student’s interview after the completion of the design project. The semi-structured interviews helped the researchers to gain access to the subjective understandings of the students (Drever, 1995) as these focused on gathering students’ experience about their design-based learning. Examples of interview questions include the following: “Can you tell me about your experience in designing the coolie house?”
“How did you work with your classmates?” Active listening was practiced by the research assistant whom the children were familiar with as she was present in most of their classes. The researchers who conducted the interview were present in most of the classroom sessions, and this helps greatly in grounding the students’recount on what had transpired in the classroom.
Other than these two forms of data, the researchers had access to the students’ online posts and all the lesson observation field notes and video recordings of the lessons. These various forms of data were reviewed and used to triangulate the researchers’interpretation.
4.3.4 Instrument
This study used the 21 CC survey to measure students’perception of their engage- ment of six dimensions related to 21st century learning practices and their self- efficacy of knowledge creation. Based on the consensus that emerged in several discussions about 21st century learning (Dede,2010; Howland et al.,2012; Voogt
& Roblin,2012), the 21 CC survey selected the dimensions of self-directed learning (SDL), meaningful learning with ICT (MLT), collaborative learning (CoL), critical
56 4 Design Thinking and Children
thinking (CriT), creative thinking (CreT), authentic problem solving (APS), and knowledge creation efficacy (KCE) as the key dimensions of 21st century learning.
Thirty-two items were constructed for the survey with each dimension having three to five items. The survey was reviewed by two education professors to establish face validity. In addition, two school teachers reviewed its language with respect to its appropriateness for primary schools students (primary three and above). The survey items were rated with a seven-point Likert scale (1, strongly disagree, to 7, strongly agree). The descriptions of the survey dimensions are as follows:
• Self-directed learning (SDL) dimension examines students’perceptions of the extent they are actively engaged in planning, executing, monitoring, and adapting their own learning processes. For example, “In this class, I adjust the ways I study based on my progression.”
• Meaningful learning with ICT (MLT) dimension measures students’perceptions of using ICT tools and software to construct and communicate their emerging understanding. For example, “In this class, I construct ICT-based materials (e.g., PowerPoint slides, word documents, mind maps) to represent my understanding.”
• Collaborative learning (CoL) dimension explores students’perceptions of work- ing with their teammates, including interaction, discussion, and co-construction of ideas. For example, “In this class, my classmates and I actively discuss different views we have about things we are learning.”
• Critical-thinking (CriT) dimension examines students’engagement in evaluat- ing the value of the information they are getting and justifying their perspectives.
For example, “In this class, I check which information is supported by evidence and which are not.”
• Creative thinking (CreT) dimension investigates students’perceptions of their engagement in creating ideas or developing new ways of doing things. For example, “In this class, I produce ideas that are likely to be useful.”
• Authentic problem-solving (APS) dimension studies students’perception about the authenticity of the design challenges they are working on. For example, “In this class, I learn about the real-life problems that people have.”
• Knowledge creation efficacy (KCE) dimension measures students’sense of self- efficacy to produce new ideas or knowledge. For example, “I am able to create useful ideas that may help to address problems in our society.”
To validate the survey, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using another sample of primary five students (N¼241). The results show that the values of factor loadings for all items of the seven factors to be larger than 0.50. For all seven factors, the scores of composite reliabilities were higher than the cutoff value of 0.70, while the scores of average variance extracted were higher than the cutoff value of 0.50. Moreover, the values of chi-square per degree of freedom¼1.92, RMSEA¼0.06, and CFI¼0.91 showed reasonable model fit (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006). For this study, the overall Cronbach alpha for the questionnaire was 0.98. The Cronbach alpha reliabilities for each factor are reported in Table4.1.
4.3.5 Data Analysis
Independent sample t-tests were employed to determine if the students in the interven- tion classes possessed stronger perception of being engaged in 21st century learning than the comparison classes. Interview data was transcribed verbatim and analyzed through the constant comparative method adapted from the grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin,1990). Open coding was first applied to the students’interview transcript. The codes were then grouped to form categories. The categories that emerged were generally about different aspects of the students’learning, which were first categorized using categories such as learning about history, design, Internet-based research, and collaboration. We then compared the emerged categories to the various dimensions of design episode articulated in Chap.3and found that it could fit quite naturally. For example, Internet-based research could be organized under the techno- logical episode, and learning about history could either be classified as in the cognitive or the metacognitive dimensions, whereas collaboration was classified as a social- cultural episode. The productivity episode, however, was not clearly identifiable from the codes. Explication of the relationships between the codes and categories resulted in the themes reported next. To ensure the trustworthiness of the findings, we sent this chapter to the teachers teaching the class to review and critique its findings. The teachers agreed with the findings reported below.