Designing for Thinking

3 Steps to Creating Student Design Teams – example from Steve Isaac’s 8 th grade classroom The example of students as designers that I found was in an article that also focused on how you can build your own design teams in your classroom. To do this the article talked about Steve Isaac’s class and how he enables his students as designers on a daily basis. The article outlines how Isaacs leads his design class by building learning experiences for his students that all center around design. One of the parts of the article that I found most compelling was Isaacs talking about the steps of the design process he has his students work through and how the cycle helps them evolve and grow as students. In this example you can tell that Isaac’s focus is on process over product. He acknowledges that things will sometimes fail but that his students get to do “real problem-solving stuff”. The biggest takeaways I got from reading about Mr. Isaacs example is that seeing students as designers is ...

As I have dug more and more into the idea of students as designers I have discovered there is definitely evidence out there that this idea is gaining traction. You can find several articles about design in the classroom and teaching design thinking to students. There has also been a movement towards makers spaces and using making in the classroom embodies this idea. Especially as you see schools moving toward more student-centered learning environments and schools pushing teachers to adopt project-based learning as a way to instruct students this idea of students as designers is beginning to be more and more widespread in the classroom. The research I have done shows that when this is done well in the classroom it can gain very powerful and promising results for students. It allows them to have more agency over what they’re doing, teaches them skills that they find valuable, and overall increase their engagement in the learning they’re doing. Furthermore it can provide them with oppo...

As teachers we are always trying to think of ways to engage students in the curriculum. Whether it's simple strategies to boost student participation or creating project based learning opportunities where students are asked to apply their knowledge to real-world problems, we as teachers want to empower our students with the ability to pursue and build upon their own knowledge and skills. When considering the idea of students as designers as a way to engage students in learning it becomes apparent that this is a shift from more traditional student and teacher roles in the classroom. With students as designers the narrative is flipped, so that it's teachers who are designing and facilitating experiences while students are able to hold the reigns and take the learning in the direction they wish. More and more research is being done that suggests that when we ask students to behave as designers we are supporting their development of skills that will best prepare them for the real w...

Many of us do not truly understand creativity. We think that we are not right-brained visionaries who are able to think more creatively than everyone else. In his book, Creative Intelligence; Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire , Bruce Nussbaum asserts that creativity is an essential aspect of our society, that everyone has the ability to develop and foster creativity and that if we want to remain competitive in a global economy we must encourage creativity in our companies and businesses. Nussbaum divides his book into three parts. In part I “Reclaiming our Creativity” he asserts the idea that creativity is not individual and that ‘social forces’ play an important role in its development. He also discusses how misunderstood creativity is and that it’s important for us to start thinking of it through a new lens, mainly that we as people can all be creative.   In Part II “The Five Competencies of Creative Intelligence”, He divides creativity into five core...

The purpose of this blog is to take a critical look at students as designers and how that can help create more meaningful learning experiences for students.  I am a 9th grade history teacher with Fairfax County Public Schools. I have taught 8th grade Math, Civics, World History and the AVID elective class. I earned my undergraduate degree in history and secondary education from Appalachian State University in 2011. In July 2020 I will complete a masters in curriculum and instruction with a concentration in design and digital learning in schools.