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This article describes the concept and the implementation of an interdisciplinary seminar that was held at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. Student teachers for elementary school subjects were first taught in Design Thinking. Then they used their acquired knowledge to create learning scenarios for the subjects Art/Crafts and General Science and Social Studies. The article highlights the results and offers the opportunity to discuss the potentials of Design Thinking with regard to its transfer to classroom and teacher education against the background of fostering children’s creativity, problem-solving skills, and collaborative work.
Creativity, problem-solving skills and the ability for collaborative work are considered key competences for facing the challenges of the 21st century. Children are born with an inherent creativity that decreases throughout their school careers. A research team of designers and educators investigates whether the implementation of Design Thinking (DT) in textile education in German elementary schools is a suitable method to preserve children’s creativity. Initial surveys with teachers and pilot studies in elementary schools showed high motivation and openmindedness towards DT in classroom. The challenge will be to develop suitable teaching modules for elementary schools of the federal state Baden Württemberg.
The development and preservation of children’s innate creativity as they enter their professional career has grown in importance due to fundamental changes in today’s economy and society. It is therefore key to understand how teaching strategies can contribute to educational change in the early stages of schooling. Design teaching encompasses a variety of skills that can help schools shift their focus to foster children’s natural ability to “ask why” in their search for learning how to think and create. This article presents the results of an interdisciplinary workshop involving university students aiming to develop new educational approaches to foster children’s creativity through design to be implemented in the elementary school curriculum of the German federal state Baden-Württemberg. To support the workshop participants in providing a holistic concept within a compressed time period, a sustainability framework was included to further articulate their brief. The teams who were composed of chemists, computer scientists, designers, and engineers, followed the Design Thinking process to develop their proposals. A kick-off meeting presenting results of an international qualitative survey with elementary school teachers, as well as expert input during the workshop addressing the relevant topics, provided teams with key information to define their design directions. Concepts designed by each team exhibited a comprehensive solution resulting in both the abstract “education idea” and physical embodiments of the tools. Their outputs included products, interior concepts to be implemented in classrooms, exercises as well as games to support the newly developed educational models. The benefits and limitations of these concepts along with key observations of participants’ interdisciplinary collaboration are presented and discussed herein. Future work will investigate the Design knowledge of German elementary school teachers more in depth and will involve testing the new concepts in German elementary school environments.
Ein Forscherteam der Pädagogischen Hochschule Freigburg und der Hochschule Reutlingen mit Expertisen in Kommunikationsdesign und einer ästhetisch-kulturellen Fachdidaktik der Grundschulpädagogik erforscht, inwieweit sich der iterative Prozess und Prinzipien des Design Thinking eignen, Kreativität, Problemlösekompetenz und kollaboratives Arbeiten von Grundschulkindern zu födern. Grundlage der Überlegungen sind die prozessorientierten Kompetenzen der Fächer Kunst/Werken und Sachunterricht gemäß dem aktuellen Bildungsplan in Baden-Württemberg. Nach Vortstudien mit Lehrpersonen und Ausbildungslehrkräften wurde eine Unterrichtseinheit konzipiert, in welcher Kinder der dritten Klassenstufe mittels Design Thinking den perfekten Leseort umsetzen sollten.