Educating the Reflective Educator: Design Processes and Digital Fabrication for the Classroom

Abstract

Design thinking and digital technologies are increasingly introduced in education to develop children's design literacy. This shift demands a change in teachers' mindsets, capabilities and approaches to design and technology as well as new teaching practices. This paper reports on a research-based master's course developed to address and study the challenges that educators experience when teaching design in K-12 classes. We investigate three aspects that we argue are crucial when developing teachers' capability to teach design literacy to children: (1) ability to navigate a complex design process, (2) managing digital and analogue design materials and (3) balancing different modes of teaching. This paper demonstrates how a combination of design theory, in-school practice and peer-to-peer learning created a framework towards educating design educators -- a framework that allowed us to investigate K-12 teachers' development of core competencies for bringing design and digital fabrication to diverse students. In addition, the study shows how the framework can facilitate and support co-development of new teaching practices.