{"id":4714,"date":"2019-06-16T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4714"},"modified":"2019-06-10T14:27:10","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T19:27:10","slug":"design-thinking-how-does-it-work-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/design-thinking-how-does-it-work-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Design Thinking: How Does It Work In The Classroom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Design thinking<\/strong> invites students to approach learning with an engineer’s perspective.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Students begin with a problem, and think their way towards several possible solutions. Each design thinking framework includes its own particulars, but all include variations of these steps:<\/p>\n

deliberately explore the problem,<\/p>\n

brainstorm several possible solutions,<\/p>\n

create those solutions,<\/p>\n

repeat these steps as necessary (with healthy doses of metacognition).<\/p>\n

Here, for instance, is a 1-pager<\/a> from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education that summarizes key design-thinking ideas and protocols.<\/p>\n

To be confident that this approach has merit, we should ask ourselves two hard questions:<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: do students who learn design thinking apply it in new circumstances<\/em>? If not, then the method might help students solve a specific problem — but not help them think differently about problems in general.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: when students apply design thinking to novel problems, do they learn more than others who don’t<\/em>? If not, then this new way of thinking doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference.<\/p>\n

So: how might we answer these tough questions?<\/p>\n

Researchers at Stanford’s School of Education wanted to give it a try<\/a>…<\/p>\n

The Research Plan<\/h2>\n

A large research team worked with 6th graders in a California public school. They had students practice two distinct design thinking systems.<\/p>\n

One group practiced a system that urged them to seek out corrective feedback<\/strong>. That is: they got in the habit of looking for constructive criticism.<\/p>\n

A second group practiced a different design-thinking system that emphasized creating several different prototype models<\/strong> before deciding on which one to pursue.<\/p>\n

Helpfully, the study design insured that students learned and used these 2 systems in different classes.<\/p>\n

Math class (2 weeks)<\/p>\n

Social Studies (1 week)<\/p>\n

Science (1 week)<\/p>\n

A week later, students took a test gave them the chance to apply those skills.<\/p>\n

However — and this is the key point — the test didn’t resemble any of the previous design thinking work that they had done. For this reason, the test let researchers answer this question:<\/p>\n

“Do students who practice design thinking for a full month spontaneously apply those strategies when facing new, not-obviously-related problems?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, given how well they did on this test, it let them answer a second question:<\/p>\n

“Do these design thinking strategies help students solve problems more effectively?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is: this study design let researchers answer the two hard questions we asked ourselves at the beginning of this post.<\/p>\n

Two Answers<\/h2>\n

This study, I suspect, will be something of a Rorschach test for people who look at its conclusions.<\/p>\n

Skeptics<\/strong> — and, by the way, I myself am often in the “skeptic” category — may focus on the most straightforward finding: “there was no stand-alone effect of treatment.”<\/p>\n

In other words: the training didn’t have a statistically measurable effect.<\/p>\n

Optimists<\/strong>, however, might well have a different take.<\/p>\n

To explore their results in greater detail, Chin & Co. analyzed data for the students based on their prior academic accomplishment<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For students in the high-achieving group, and the middle-achieving group, the design thinking training had no statistically measurable effect.<\/p>\n

However, for those in the low-achieving group, it certainly did.<\/p>\n

An optimist’s summary might go like this.<\/p>\n

“Mid- and high-achieving students are ALREADY doing what design thinking teaches. That is, those student ALREADY seek out constructive feedback, and try different models before they decide on one.<\/p>\n

The design-thinking training helped low-achieving students behave more like their mid- and high-achieving peers.<\/p>\n

That’s great!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If, in fact, a design thinking curriculum can help some students develop the good learning habits that other students already have, that is in fact great news.<\/p>\n

The best way to use design thinking will clearly depend on your own school’s culture and demographics. This study gives us some hope that — used the right way with the right students — it can help students learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A careful study of design thinking finds modest successes — especially for students who have struggled in school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-4714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4714"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4723,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714\/revisions\/4723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}