Findings on Students as Designers

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 opportunities to work and interact with their larger communities, not just what is done in the school building. Some of the articles I read talked about design being taught as a way to get students to think about problems in their community and designing solutions to these problems. It is important that these projects are showing students that what they learn in the classroom can carry out into the real world and that they have the power to impact their communities in such a tangible way.