This is a reflection on Design/Human-Centred Design Thinking, and the possibility of my staff working toward a goal like that of King Middle School in Maine.
Design thinking is an inquiry strategy/method that is a large part of ADST. The new ADST curriculum is very exciting and has been laid out in such a way that teachers do not need to feel daunted. The big ideas are a slow progression and allow for students to become familiar with “I can” statements, terminology, and competencies that they can build on in each grade. When students are in K-3, design thinking focuses on ideating, making, and sharing. In grades 4-5 students begin defining, ideating, prototyping, testing, making, and sharing. In grades 6-9 this expands to include empathizing as the inspiration for the defining stage. What if a teacher is still confused about what this all means?
Applied Design, Skills and Technologies: Design Thinking and Human-Centred Design Thinking by Sandra Averill and Stacey Bernier is an excellent resource for helping teachers ease their way into the design process focusing on how we think and what we do with it. Inspiration, ideation, and implementation are outlined with helpful graphics to fully explain Design Thinking/Human-Centred Design Thinking. The book explains that we need to think about real-world problems, understanding people, the way they do things, why they do things, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world, and what is meaningful to them. Teachers want students’ designs to be driven by their empathy. Students need to observe, engage, watch, and listen. This empathizing is the inspiration for the defining stage. In this stage students find out what problems needs to be solved. A defining statement can be made in the older grades establishing what the user needs so that they can get what they need. Defining transitions into ideating where students use multiple brainstorming strategies to share any and all ideas with no judgement. Ideating transitions into prototyping where students make many models of their solutions to the problem they are trying to solve. They need to keep the user in mind. This transitions into testing. Creators show (and share) their prototypes. Users have the opportunity to use, misuse, experience, and compare prototypes in order to constructively inform the creators of what is working well (I really like…), or what might need work (I wonder how the prototype will _____….). Feedback should be directed at the process, not the person. Creators then take this feedback, organize it, and decide what changes need to be made. Next, testing transitions into making. This might be a final product or more of an upgraded prototype. This transitions into sharing. This is where students present their inventions to the class, the school, or a global audience. Along the way, the students engage in “just in time” learning where they might be learning how to use a drill, etc. The focus during designing is always the process, and not the outcome. The book also discusses maker thinking to inspire creativity for students’ upcoming design process. Maker spaces, Maker Days, Maker Faire/ Maker Challenges are all ways to get kids excited, motivated, and ready to innovate.
This resource was an excellent tool, and I wish I had read it a long time ago. While the new curriculum was still in its ‘optional’ phase and beginning phases, I did an inquiry unit with my grade 2 students in conjunction with my standard water-cycle unit. Learning about water conservation and how many people in the world do not have water inspired my students to want to change that. During our class inquiry while we were adding ideas on sticky notes to one of our many charts, a student raised his hand and said, “Those people from the book need a cleaning machine for their water”, and that’s where it started. The whole class just went on a tangent and began chatting about what this machine would look like. We stopped the planned lesson and made a new chart with many ideas about what a water-cleaning-machine might need or look like. They were inspired. Their empathy for the people who suffered without clean water and their knowledge they had learned through the unit meant they were ready to define and ideate. In the end their presentations were wonderful, serious, and hilarious. These seven and eight year old students presented water-cleaners. As I have become more familiar with the ADST curriculum, especially as a teacher-librarian, I can see how this resource from Averill & Bernier would be invaluable for teachers. If I had read this before I did that unit with my grade 2 students, I can’t imagine how much better the whole design process would have been.
King Middle School in Maine is an excellent and inspirational example of an expeditionary approach to Human-Centred Design Thinking. Students worked for months in multiple disciplines on ways to harness energy. In Language Arts they read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, their empathy for this character motivated their defining process for their projects. In Science, they worked on the hands-on portion of their tasks. Their ideas came to fruition. There was collaboration, exciting challenges, designing, innovating, and lots of sharing. This seemed to be a whole school initiative.
I could see this being a possibility at my school, and real bonding experience for everyone which will truly be needed. Between a seismic upgrade this year, half the school in temporary portables, people needing to move classrooms part way through the year, no gymnasium for the first months, teachers away on maternity leaves, and many new staff members, this year would be the perfect year to begin planting the seeds to put this into motion for the 2019/2020 school year. Goals for this coming year could be to start in-school lunch time informative workshops for teachers on ADST, Design Thinking/Human-Centred Design Thinking, and the Growth Mindset. We have teachers at our school with many strengths and lots of young staff who are ready to be future-ready and implement all of the things they have been learning in the teaching program. The book by Averill & Bernier could be used as the basis or even steps for workshops. Chapter two (which I read because the video was not available on a PC) elaborated on the 8 key values of Human-Centred Design Thinking. This would be a great place to start. This year would be spent getting all the teachers up to speed on ADST and HCDT, and planning what a large scale, school wide project like this would look like. In the library, during my collaboration times, and even during my prep coverage times, I can continue to familiarize students with the ADST curriculum and design thinking. By next school year, when all of the renovations are finished and teachers feel confident in their abilities with the new curriculum and what design thinking entails, we could be ready to take this on.
Mrs. Clark in the LLC 