A common method used to develop design thinking in the education of profes- sionals such as architects is through studio-based strategies where novices work alongside experts in design projects across a period of time. Novices typically develop design knowledge through the feedback and guidance of the expert or via personal observation and reflection. This is akin to conceptions of cognitive apprenticeship where skills and knowledge are being learned in situated contexts (Brown, Collins, & Duguid,1989). In the studio-based approach which emphasizes learning through experience and apprenticeship, novices largely experience the
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design process, but there may not be structured instructional experiences to help them explicate specific design knowledge and design reasoning from their experi- ences. In the end, novices’design thinking may fail to develop beyond the notion of
“creative design as a black box” (Oxman,1999, p. 106).
Beyond these professional courses, design projects are used more generally to provide a means to learn specific subjects or professional knowledge. Examples of such kinds of design experiences are projects for teachers to learn the processes for designing specific kinds of ICT lessons (e.g., Koh & Divaharan, 2011), or the engagement of students in design projects to learn subject-specific knowledge as described in Chap.4. In these educational studies, how learners are being supported to develop design thinking throughout their engagement with the design projects tend not to be explicated thoroughly. To better foster design thinking, we propose the need to consider how design experiences are being designed as well as how design reasoning and design dispositions can be fostered during design projects.
7.3.1 Designing Learners ’ Design Experience
In the field of education, teachers, for example, are taught specific models of lesson design that explicate the steps of the process (e.g., Heinich, Molenda, Russell, &
Smaldino,1999). As detailed in Chap.6, actual design work rarely proceeds in the systematic and defined steps outlined in these lesson design models. More often than not, teachers need to integrate information related to each design step as they design lessons. Design work, therefore, has the characteristic of complex learning described by Van Merrie¨nboer, Clark, and De Croock (2002) which involves the integration of different composite skills during task performance. For such kinds of learning, these authors propose that learners need to experience multiple cycles of task performance where each cycle confronts them with increasingly complex versions of the task.
Design patterns describe the common solutions to common problems faced in a field and was first explicated by Alexander (1964) for architectural problems. It provides the language structure for design practice within a field (Gibbons, Botturi, Boot, & Nelson,2008). In recent years, researchers have started to formulate design patterns that can guide the design of educational interventions. Using an example for the design of networked learning, McAndrew, Goodyear, and Dalziel (2006) proposed that considerations of its learning outcomes, learning activities, place of execution, and community can be used to articulate the design patterns for various contexts. For example, McAndrew et al. suggested that when designing networked learning, a basic pattern would be to consider the interactions between learning tasks, learning communities, the spaces for learning, and how these influence learning outcomes. Knowledge of design patterns can help designers solve prob- lems more effectively and is identified by Hoadley and Cox (2009) as an important source of design knowledge for educational designers. Therefore, design projects can firstly be structured to expose learners to the important design patterns in their
respective fields of practice. Drawing reference from Van Merrie¨nboer et al. (2002), instructors firstly need to purposively select the kinds of design patterns that they want learners to experience and structure each as a design task. The second step is then to carefully sequence learners’design tasks so that they can experience design problems of increasing complexities in gradual succession.
A basic structure for helping learners to develop context-based design knowl- edge is laid when design tasks are purposively selected and sequenced using design patterns. We can then move on to facilitate learners’understanding of the design thinking that undergirds each design pattern.
7.3.2 Developing Understanding of Design Thinking
It is important that the doingof design is supported by an understanding of the thinking that drives design decisions (Oxman, 1999; Shambaugh & Magliaro, 2001). In the field of education, studies related to the understanding of thinking are largely found in the area of teacher education where the use of reflection supports teachers to develop knowledge about their teaching practices (Conway, 2001). It is believed that teachers can be more competent in solving problems related to their teaching practice when they develop the competencies of reflective practitioners as described by Sch€on (1983). Nevertheless, in practice, reflection activities tend to focus on teachers’articulation of beliefs, whereas the review and critique of teaching practices appeared to be weak (Marcos, Sanchez, & Tillema, 2011). When explicating how Sch€on’s conception of reflection-in-action can be applied to teachers during lesson design, Wieringa (2011) visualized it as a means of helping teachers to understand the kinds of teaching knowledge that they can generate through lesson design. This thesis is supported by Jang and Chen (2010) who found that when preservice teachers are guided to reflect upon what they learned from the design and implementation of specific ICT lessons, they developed deeper appreciations of the kinds of technology-integrated pedagogies that better supported different kinds of science content. Therefore, reflection activities must be directed towards helping designers to develop knowledge of the conditions for using different kinds of design solutions. Design thinking is therefore developed as designers are being scaffolded to rationalize their design decisions and to consol- idate their repository of design solutions through reflection.
Design thinking can also be developed when the cognitive structures employed by designers during design are being explicated (Oxman, 1999). One way of scaffolding reflection activities is through tools that help designers to represent their design decisions. In design fields, it is typical for designers to externalize their design thinking through the development of artifacts such as prototypes or model drawings (Cross,2004; Lawson,1997). By analyzing their artifacts, designers are able to develop their design thinking by reflecting upon the efficacy of their design decisions. As described in Chap.4, digital tools can be used to support students in this aspect. When teachers create and refine their lesson conceptions using systems
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such as the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) (Cameron,2006), they can potentially use these to support the reflection of their design decisions and processes.
7.3.3 Developing Design Dispositions
Whether designers are born or made remains a debatable issue. Nevertheless, our studies of teachers show that their perceived confidence in design dispositions had significant positive influence on their perceived confidence for ICT lesson design practices (Koh et al., in press). While design thinking is associated with the practices and strategies employed to design, designers’dispositions are affective considerations that could influence how they approach design. For example, teachers’ beliefs could constitute greater barriers for the integration of ICT as compared to barriers related to the lack of resources or equipment (Ertmer, 2005). In teacher training, strategies such as instructor modeling and hands-on practice are important for building teachers’acceptance and confidence for using ICT tools (Brush et al.,2003; Koh & Divaharan,2011). Koh, Chai, and Lee (2013) found that multiple design cycles are useful for influencing teachers’confidence to design. For designers such as teachers and students who may have apprehensions towards design, these strategies may be useful in helping them to build confidence for engaging in design work. Across time, this may have positive influence in changing their dispositions to design.
In summary, several methods appear to be important for developing design thinking. There is a need for clear articulation and sequencing of design problems to promote recognition of design patterns, multiple opportunities to design, reflec- tion activities that help designers to create understanding of their design decisions as well as instructional strategies to support the development of confidence, and dispositions for design work.