Background
I started off this module on ISTE 4 Innovative Designer wanting to discover some of the ways that coding, technology, makerspaces, or other innovation age technologies would allow students to demonstrate perseverance and increase their capacity to solve open-ended problems. In relation to those questions, I wondered how the above approaches to learning would help students to demonstrate understanding? I found that in order to begin to answer this question I might need to focus on just one technology. In my search for resources that included student voice to show understanding I found a piece that connects to the design process and closely resembled a makerspace.
The process
ISTE 4 Innovative Designer states that students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions. Within that standard there are four indicators. I chose to focus on 4d which says students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance and the capacity to work with open-ended problems. As an elementary teacher tolerance for ambiguity and perseverance in problem solving both definitely seem like traits I would appreciate in my students. If my ultimate goal is to help my students develop into productive members of society then both traits are helpful. According to a 1999 U.S. Department of Labor report 65% of grade school kids would end up working at a job that had yet to be invented. Many innovative companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google didn’t exist when their current employees were in grade school (ISTE Connects 2016). As I studied the design process I started to better understand how those two traits, tolerance for ambiguity and perseverance in problem solving are extremely useful in today’s digital world as well as in many other professions that more and more often integrate the use of modern technology into environments that had previously relied upon more traditional technologies (2016).
In my search for answers to my question about student understanding being increased by innovation age technologies I found the book Design and Technology in Primary School Classrooms: Developing Teachers Perspectives and Practices. I read a chapter called Children Solving Problems? The chapter traces the a design process for a group of 10-11 year old students in the UK who use the curriculum for design and technology (CDT) (Frost, 2002). In my further reading it seems that CDT is similar to today’s makerspaces or project based learning here in the U.S. In the UK classroom conditions were not the same as typical U.S. classrooms but I still think that there are some valuable takeaways from the chapter. The goal for students in the classroom was to design a toy for a partially sighted child (2002). The classroom teachers allowed students to have a lot of autonomy in choosing partners and choosing their projects. Students also had access to many different materials and machines, much like they would in a makerspace today. Student interviews allowed readers a window into the thought processes of students as they worked on their toy as well as after the final product was complete. One fascinating phenomenon was that students seemed to fall into two categories.
A Positive Resolution
First there were students who seemed to excel at the task. The grade school boys, Simon and Nathan were very confident in their skills and their ability to solve problems. It was evident that they had to persevere in their design, they also preferred having the freedom to do things as they pleased. They were even critical of some design work they had seen from some high school boys, Simon was concerned that the teacher had provided the design while Nathan was concerned about quality and thought that he could have made a better pneumatic model car. “I don’t think they were good enough for boys that age. I think they’d be perfectly capable of making something better than that…I think the teacher may have drawn it on the blackboard and said ‘This is your idea…this is how you make it….do it like this and it will come out alright” (Frost 2002, p.92). Both boys admitted to enjoying tasks set by the teacher that still allowed them to choose what to do or those that allowed them to make up their mind of how to do it (2002). Alison and Becky were two other students who were deemed successful by the study. The girls also said that they enjoyed tasks that were open and enjoyed inventing things. Both agreed that they would like to carry out their own project and Alison even said “that the teacher’s role within such a project would be: …to help you out…in difficult times….I don’t know….I don’t think we would need one. If everyone was sensible we wouldn’t need one” (Frost 2002, p. 93). Clearly again these students seem ready to persevere and comfortable with ambiguity in problem solving. I wondered after reading, what were these students like in the other subjects in a more typical classroom environment?
Neutral or Negative Resolution
There were a majority of students in this class who didn’t seem to experience the positive results of the first four. These students projects were characterized by uncertainty, lack of focus, fear, anxiety or aversion to failure. Some of these groups had great ideas like Adam, Steven and Joanne but they couldn’t move from their idea of a walking, barking dog, to a reality (2002). This group struggled because Joanne was made to be the leader of the group even though she didn’t want to be. Steven and Adam often stared off into space, watched other work or wandered the room instead of working productively on their project. Ultimately “after being denied the security of being told what to do by the teacher” or given any direction from her group members Joanne ended up taking the project home and soliciting help from her mother (Frost 2002, p. 95). It made me wonder if the reaction of these students was reinforced by the typical school environment. Or perhaps did their home environment cause some of the negative reactions to uncertainty? It was equally interesting that Joanne’s mother provided the pattern for a ragdoll. For these students “fear and anxiety were often related to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of doing things, and a non-acceptances of the teacher’s role as guide and adviser was apparent” (Frost 2002, p. 95). There were times when the teacher did intervene especially with Adam and Steven, and it seemed to make their difficulties even worse. “The children seemed to have learned to be dependent on the teacher, and unable to operate unless given direct instructions” (Frost 2002, p. 99).
Final Thoughts
The chapter by Frost seems to sort students into two categories, those who were successful and those who were not. Based on student responses it would be easy to draw that same conclusion. However, many other resources I consulted caused me to push back on that idea. I wish that instead of one isolated project I could see how these students understanding changed over time. All of the students were able to create a toy, not all were able to do it independently, but I wonder if that was a reflection on the clarity of process rather than the understanding or ability that students had. I wondered if students perhaps were not motivated because they didn’t have the complete freedom to come up with a problem that they were going to solve, instead it was given to them. Did they really empathize with the partially sighted student? The Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide from Stanford starts with empathy as the first mode in the design process. How can we authentically help students to empathize with unfamiliar people groups in classroom setting before embarking on a project?
Ultimately I think to help students become innovative designers we need to shift a lot of our thinking as teachers. As teachers we often feel caught in the catch 22 described by the following quote,
“If I wasn’t aware this was a piece of research, I think I would have given them a lot more help. Why? Because I don’t want them to fail, but as soon as I tell them what to do I am solving their problem for them—thereby compounding their failure. Process not product is the important thing! We have trained them not to think” (Frost 2002, p. 100).
This is a shift in understanding and action that will likely need to be undertaken by teachers through careful teaching of the design process. There were a few ways that the CDT process seemed to vary from the Makerspace movement that might help all students to be successful. First, individuality is acknowledged and “it recognizes that no two students will learn the same concepts at the same rate” (Kurti, Kurti, & Fleming, 2014, p. 9). Additionally if teachers can help students to see that failure really is a way to improve then perhaps the students like Adam, Steven and Joanne would feel that their final product was really just their first attempt at many that they could try until they truly achieved success (Lenz 2015),(Kurti, Kurti, & Fleming, 2014). Perhaps all students would develop the kinds of learners who embrace ambiguity, who persevere to solve open-ended problems and who are innovative in their thinking and design. ISTE 4 seems to be a key competency that students will need to develop in order to be successful members of society in their future careers. As teachers, we need to shift our teaching, feedback and our own understanding of success to help our students become innovative designers, if we begin to do that I believe that we will see our students begin to experience a more complete sense of understanding.
Resources
Frost, S. (2002). Children solving problems? In L. Tickle (Ed.), Design and technology in primary school classrooms: Developing teachers perspectives and practices. (pp. 89-102). Florence, US : Routledge Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com
Institute of Design at Stanford. An introduction to design thinking process guide. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dschool.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf?sessionID=e62aa8294d323f1b1540d3ee21e961cf7d1bce38
ISTE Connects. (2016, January 19). Here’s how you teach innovative thinking. International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=651
Kurti, D. L., Kurti, R. S., Fleming, L. (2014) The philosophy of educational makerspaces. Teacher Librarian, 41 (5). Retrieved from http://teacherlibrarian.com/2014/06/18/educational-makerspaces/
Lenz, B. (2015, April 8). Failure is essential to learning. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/failure-essential-learning-bob-lenz
