Project Pitch Reflection:
On January 22nd, 2020, I met with Shifa Isaacs (IB Curriculum Coordinator) and Mary Ann Durkalski (Library Media Specialist/ Building Technology Specialist) to present my Project Pitch at Lomond Elementary School in Shaker Heights, OH. Throughout the 2019-2020 school year, I have been a part of the building i3 Committee, identified as a group of teacher leaders and early adopters who will be leading professional learning and curriculum development to increase the integration of STEAM learning engagements across the curriculum. Shifa and Mary Ann also serve on the i3 Committee and are experts in facilitating curriculum for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Year Programme (PYP) and integrating technology at all grade levels, K-4.
Prior to the development of this project, the Shaker Schools outlined goals and objectives for the i3 Initiative to coincide with the awarding of an i3 grant to the district. The instructional problem involves limited STEAM instruction across the PreK-4 curriculum. Where it exists, STEAM learning engagements tend to be disconnected from the overall IB Units of Inquiry (UOIs). To address this, the goal of the i3 Initiative is to build coherence across all elementary schools and facilitate teams to integrate rigorous STEAM instruction across the Program of Inquiry (POI) through the application of Design Thinking frameworks. Since the Design Thinking framework is central to the curriculum development, this became the basis for my project pitch.
My project focus includes proposing a blended learning curriculum format, focused on transdisciplinary UOI that will be sequenced using the Design Thinking Framework from Stanford’s d.School. The term and practice of “design thinking” is generally credited to the international design firm, IDEO, founded by David Kelly in 1978. The same year, Kelly began as a professor at Stanford University where he also founded the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, better known today as Stanford’s d.school. This connection between IDEO and Stanford’s d.school is apparent in the work that both organizations have done in connection with the growth and development of “human-centered design” and “Design Thinking” models.
According to the history of “Design Thinking” from IDEO (2020), the roots of design thinking and human-centered design stem from designer and scholar, Richard Buchanan. Buchanan (1992) framed the idea “design thinking” as ongoing design challenges through their connection to the notion of “wicked problems”. Similar notions can be traced further back to 1935 with scholars like John Dewey and the work of Rittel & Webber in the 1970’s. “Wicked Problems” were framed as those that are “complex, open-ended, and ambiguous” and that don’t lend themselves to a simplistic “right” or “wrong”.
It is important to distinguish and understand the differentiation between “Design Thinking” (framework) and “Human-Centered Design”(mindset). “Human-Centered Design”, attributed to the design firm IDEO, is a mindset or approach that can be used along side of “Design Thinking”. While “Design Thinking” is a 5-step iterative process or model that leads to the development and design of products or solutions to a creative problem. While I did find that even within IDEO and the d.School’s own literature these terms are at times used synonymously, we should differentiate how it can be used as either a mindset or approach as well as a more prescriptive 5-step model for design.
The theoretical origins of design thinking are rooted in social constructivism and the work of Vygotsky. Constructivist underpinnings should not be discounted either as the work of Piaget (1972) and Dewey(1933/1998) have also influenced the development of the Design Thinking model. Design thinking focuses on building knowledge by constructing understanding through team-based collaboration. It uses learning experiences and contexts that encourage learner readiness and a willingness to learn, and are designed to facilitate the extrapolation knowledge through making connections to go beyond given information.
Broadly speaking, Design Thinking has a lot of strengths. Namely that it fosters creativity and innovation and can be applied in virtually any context or industry. Design Thinking ensures a user-centric or learner-centric approach and has been cited for significant increases in student’s ability to problem-solve, collaboration and creativity. Not to mention the real-world application for design and development. For example, IBM’s use of design thinking claims to have resulted in a 300% return on investment and a 75% increase in team efficiency. All these benefits are not to say that Design Thinking does not have its challenges and weaknesses. The generality of Design Thinking as a broad model and approach can also be considered a weakness. It creates the risk for misalignment to goals and objectives because it tends to be so open-ended and encourages rapid-ideation, iteration, and prototyping over detail oriented design. This also means that there is a high risk for failure in the process of re-framing a problem and finding potential solutions. Some critics claim that all too often design thinking is used to tackle the easy or obvious problems rather than pushing limits to find solutions for more complex global issues. Design thinking has also been criticized as a “buzzword” or “trend” because of its recent rise to popularity.
From a personal perspective as an educator, I think that the design thinking model has the ability to help teachers revamp learning engagements and promote creativity and innovation through authentic and active learning. The digital use divide comes to mind as I think about how design thinking can be used to help students become creators, rather than consumers. I attended the ISTE conference in Philadelphia, PA last summer and one presenter summed up this idea very well. Cathy Hunt (2019) said, “We want to teach students to be creators not consumers. Think of it (learning) like a recipe. Tech is the tool. Materials and resources are the ingredients. Creativity is the process.” I believe that Design Thinking is one model that can help us navigate this process.
This pitch was well received by Shifa and Mary Ann and the template framework of the Google Classroom and Site were approved to move forward. The third grade UOI were selected to use curriculum content for the design project. The initial sequence of content based pages was changed in order to fit a more transdisciplinary model for learning engagements. This pitch will be followed by continued collaboration with the third grade team, Shifa, and Mary Ann.
REFERENCES
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