Design expert’s participation in elementary students’ collaborative design process

Design expert’s participation in elementary students’collaborative design process

Kaiju Kangas • Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen • Kai Hakkarainen

Published online: 12 May 2011� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The main goal of the present study was to provide insights into how disci-

plinary expertise might be infused into Design and Technology classrooms and how

authentic processes based on professional design practices might be constructed. We

describe elementary students’ collaborative lamp designing process, where the leadership

was provided by a professional designer. The video-recorded lessons on lamp designing

and the ‘‘Lamp Designing’’ view of the project’s database constituted the data sources of

the study. A data-driven qualitative content analysis was conducted for categorizing the

scaffolding activities of the designer. The results indicate that the designer’s participation

opened up the world of designing for the students. This enabled the students to engage in

embodied design practices, and to gain new insights of the professional mechanisms of

designing. Having the professional designer working with them, provided students with the

opportunity to gain the full potential that solving complex design problems can offer to

learning.

Keywords Design learning � Collaborative designing � Participatory learning �Scaffolding

Introduction

This study explores the opportunities afforded by the participation of a professional design

expert in elementary students’ collaborative design process in the context of a broader

inquiry-oriented study project, extending across three semesters. We employ an approach

to learning in which design is an integral part of inquiry-oriented knowledge building

pedagogy (Davis 1999a,b; Fortus et al. 2004; Kolodner et al. 2003; Scardamalia and

K. Kangas (&) � P. Seitamaa-HakkarainenDepartment of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 8, 00014 University of Helsinki,Finlande-mail: [email protected]

K. HakkarainenDepartment of Education, University of Turku, P.O. Box 9, 20014 University of Turku, Finland

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Int J Technol Des Educ (2013) 23:161–178DOI 10.1007/s10798-011-9172-6

Bereiter 2006). Our main goal is to provide insights into how disciplinary expertise might

be infused into Design and Technology (D&T) classrooms and how authentic processes

based on professional design practices might be constructed. Focusing on the socio-cultural

approach, particularly to the research of collaborative learning, we will draw attention to

the participatory learning and knowledge-creation aspects of design learning (Hakkarainen

et al. 2004). Participatory learning (Jurow et al. 2008) means that learning involves

external domain experts working with students in the setting to bridge between school

practices and community practices (Roth and Lee 2006; Wenger 1998). By hybridizing

classroom and design practices we aimed to engage students in collaboratively solving

complex problems using the conceptual and material tools of design experts. Participatory

learning, as understood in this study, is an instrumental value, because it promotes sup-

porting, creating, and advancing students’ own knowledge and skills in the collaborative

creation of design artifacts.

The involvement of professionals in education has been recommended in several

studies, however, relatively little is known about interactive processes of integrating

domain experts in inquiry-oriented D&T classrooms. The present study explored the

opportunities afforded by complex design tasks and participation of a professional design

expert in elementary students’ collaborative design process. The central idea was to

describe pedagogical practices that allow one to acknowledge the role of domain expert’s

participation in design learning. In the following, we will first describe the nature of design

problems. Second, we will discuss the role of scaffolding in D&T settings, both scaffolding

in social interaction as well as that mediated by material artifacts. Then, we will report our

empirical study, elementary students’ collaborative lamp designing process, where the

leadership was provided by a professional designer.

The nature of design problems

Design activities and design learning provide students important opportunities to work with

complex design tasks within authentic and meaningful learning contexts. Design problems

are characteristically ill-defined, dynamic, authentic, and complex; they require integration

of knowledge across domains, as well as implementation of conceptual ideas in design of

materially embodied artifacts (Cross 2004; Davis 1999a,b; Hennessy and Murphy 1999).

Rittel and Webber (1984) described design problems as ‘‘wicked problems’’ (see also

Buchanan 1996) that are often ill-formulated; that is to say, they are difficult and puzzling.

The information they carry is usually confusing and includes conflicting values and vague

user needs. There is no right or wrong solution to a wicked problem (Buchanan 1996; Rittel

and Webber 1984), only more or less satisfactory solutions (Simon 1969). Design problems

are conceptual artifacts that guide the design process, but are likely to significantly

transform when the process advances through successive iterative stages. The stages

cannot be completely foreseen before actually implementing ideas in design of an artifact.

The wickedness of design problems appears to stem from the necessity of going through

iterative efforts to ‘‘translate’’ conceptual ideas to materially embodied artifacts, a process

in which ideas and prototypes of artifacts evolve. Designing is not mere practical activity

for straightforwardly implementing conceptual ideas in practice. The process of iteratively

designing and constructing materially embodied artifacts is, in itself, a multi-modal process

in which conceptual, practical, and materially embodied activities cross-fertilize and

support one another (Hennessy and Murphy 1999; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen and Hakkarainen

2000).

162 K. Kangas et al.

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From an educational perspective, good design tasks have several important features.

They should be (1) feasible in that learners can design and perform inquiries to solve the

task; (2) worthwhile in that they have rich content and relate to what professionals really

do; (3) contextualized in that they represent important real-world phenomena; and (4)

meaningful in that they are interesting and exciting to learners (Fortus et al. 2004;

Hennessy and Murphy 1999; Krajcik et al. 2002; Krajcik and Blumenfeld 2006; Rule

2006). These are characteristics of authentic learning activity; it is, in sum, coherent and

personally meaningful as well as purposeful within a broader social and cultural frame of

activity, i.e., the social characteristics of a particular culture (Collins et al. 1989; see also

Hennessy and Murphy 1999; Murphy and Hennessy 2001). The phrase personally mean-ingful implies that students understand the value of their activity, although they are not

likely to have had direct prior experience of the matter (Hennessy and Murphy 1999).

These kinds of design problems push students to adopt complex, flexible and creative

actions as they identify, pose, transform, and abandon solutions.

Scaffolding collaborative designing

The complexity of the design process emerges from its cyclical and iterative nature; it is

not a linear process, and the possible solutions arise from a complex interaction between

parallel refinement of the design challenge and the evolving design ideas (Lawson 2006;

Puntambekar and Kolodner 2005), as well as their implementation in actual construction of

materially embodied artifacts (Keller and Keller 1996). Due to the complexity, designing

involves the integration of several skills and competencies mediated by working with

various design instruments and practices, and thereby, has the potential for enhancing

content knowledge, reasoning capabilities, and skills related to working with material and

instrumental knowing (Davis 1999a,b; Keller and Keller 1996; Puntambekar and Kolodner

2005). However, the characteristics of the cyclical design process and the inherent nature

of wicked problems also pose some challenges for design-based teaching. We need to

understand how to lead design based activities related to wicked design problems, and how

to scaffold such activity. Teachers may not have deep understanding of the embodied

nature of designing, and therefore, may not be able to adequately coach design learning.

Solving complex design problems does not proceed well with prescribed methods or

procedures because it is hard to anticipate in detail, for instance, how material will behave

or whether plausible appearing ideas truly work in practice. Design-based activity is seen

to be an effective means for dealing with the integrated application of disciplinary skills

and content (Fortus et al. 2004; Davis 1999a,b, 2004; Davis et al. 1997), but mastering

materially embodied aspects of the process requires access to the instruments and practices

of professional designers. Overall, it appears that design learning provides a promising

setting for expert-student partnerships because it involves appropriation of materially

embodied skills and competencies.

Scaffolding as social interaction

Research into cognitive scaffolding (Wood et al. 1976) and procedural facilitation (Bereiter

and Scardamalia 1987) has indicated that, when provided with external, supporting tools,

structures, and real-time guidance, students can be helped to succeed in cognitive pro-

cesses, that are otherwise impossible. Such observations, in conjunction with inspiration

provided by the Vygotskian (1978) cultural-historical view of learning, have encouraged

Design expert’s participation 163

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investigators to analyze collaborative learning processes as well as to develop software-

based scaffolds (Quintana et al. 2004). Modeling, coaching, and scaffolding are the core of

traditional apprenticeship, where learning is supported through the processes of observa-

tion and guided practice. According to Collins (2006; Collins et al. 1989), methods that

emphasize the apprenticeship approach to learning offer students opportunities to observe,

engage in, and create or discover expert practices in context. These methods are based on

verbal scaffolding as well as observation of the performance; modes which are also very

typical in D&T education.

The non-verbal forms of scaffolding are crucial in D&T contexts. Gestures, such as

pointing, and referring to objects/artifacts and tools, support and guide the design process

along the verbal scaffolding (Johansson 2006). Murphy and Hennessy (2001) called these

forms ‘sensitive assistance’, which comprises structure and help, as well as non-verbal

forms, such as sketching, physical resources and tools. When participants of a design

process are examined as beings embodied in socio-material worlds, the importance of the

non-verbal, manipulative and practical scaffolding becomes apparent.

Material mediators of scaffolding

The material aspect of scaffolding is embedded in technological tools, physical artifacts,

activity structures, and shared knowledge practices incorporated in learning processes

(Davis and Miyake 2004; Hakkarainen 2009; Pea 2004). In the context of D&T, the

interaction with tools, concrete objects and materials is a central aspect and offers

potentially supportive environment for vital collaborative designing i.e., for developing

shared objects and understanding (Hennessy and Murphy 1999; Johansson 2006; Murphy

and Hennessy 2001). Through social interaction and visualization, design ideas, proposed

solutions, and decisions are made verbally and visually explicit and visible, and joint

decisions can be made. They also provide a common referent for discussion between the

teacher and the students (Johansson 2006).

In the design process, the interaction with two- and three-dimensional models (sketches,

prototypes) offers students direct possibilities to explore and evaluate a proposed solution’s

form and function. Various external representations (graphical and physical) provide dif-

ferent kinds of prompts to test the design ideas. The meaning of diverse design repre-

sentations has been studied both from individual (e.g., McGown et al. 1998; Popovic 2004;

Seitamaa-Hakkarainen and Hakkarainen 2000) and collaborative (e.g., Brereton 2004;

Lahti 2007; Lahti et al. 2004) points of view. These approaches do not exclude one another

because design artifacts, like sketches, facilitate individual thinking, social communica-

tion, as well as joint work.

Cultural artifacts assume both conceptual and material aspects as practical instruments

and as artifacts of collective memory; they bring ‘‘developmental histories’’ of past activ-

ities to the present. Design activity is fundamentally creative in nature; participation in

design is a deliberate process of creating future-oriented, ‘‘tertiary’’ design artifacts

(Wartofsky 1979). These artifacts embody and materialize ideas created by the students

themselves; such a process facilitates the students’ transformation as well (Paavola et al.

2004; Hakkarainen et al. 2004). A design object is not just a material product, the artifact

formed in design, but the set of specifications and features determined through the process

(Lahti 2008). Through the process of externalization and collaborating around these rep-

resentations, the first vague design ideas are transformed into further articulated and more

determined ideas, to the explicit design alternatives, and finally, externalized and objectified

as materially embodied design artifacts (Seitamaa-Hakkarainen and Hakkarainen 2000).


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The design process involves parallel working through conceptual reflection and material

implementation. Consequently, in D&T settings material artifacts and tools have a central

role in mediating the learning and scaffolding processes. Demonstrating some aspects of

the design process with material artifacts is a typical form of scaffolding in design edu-

cation. Mediating artifacts and representations work as ‘boundary objects’ (Star 1989), by

holding communication together; other forms of design communication are built around

these representations (Henderson 1999).

Aims and objectives of the study

The present study explored the opportunities afforded by complex design tasks and par-

ticipation of a professional design expert in elementary students collaborative design

process. The overall goal was to provide insights into how disciplinary expertise might be

infused into D&T classrooms and how authentic processes based on professional design

practices might be constructed. We describe a part of a longitudinal study project, ‘‘The

Artifact Project’’, where the aim was to break boundaries of traditional schoolwork by

fostering students’ inquiring and designing with the help of various experts (for detailed

description of the project, see Seitamaa-Hakkarainen et al. 2010). The technical infra-

structure of the project was provided by Knowledge Forum (KF, Scardamalia and Bereiter

2006). The focus of the present article is on the last phase of the Artifact project, during

which the students analyzed the function and properties of existing lamps and collabora-

tively designed new lamps. Leadership for this stage was provided by a professional

designer, together with the teacher. We addressed the following specific research

questions:

(1) How was disciplinary expertise infused in elementary students’ collaborative design

process?

(2) What was the role of social and material scaffolds in implementing the authentic

practices of professional designing?

Method

Participants and the setting of the study

The Artifact project was organized in an elementary school, located in a middle-class

suburb of Helsinki, Finland. In total, 32 students (19 girls), aged 10–11 years old, par-

ticipated in the project; out of these, 7 students had linguistic or other educational prob-

lems. The focus of the present study, the lamp designing stage, took place in spring 2004

and lasted 11 sessions (one session was 45–135 min, depending on the class schedule)

during a period of 2 months. The expert, a professional interior designer specialized in

lamp and light designing, was present in the classroom; the interaction between him and

the students varied from face-to-face whole-class discussions, to small team conversations,

and to sharing of comments through the Knowledge Forum database. The lamp designing

process was followed through in 13 teams of 2–4 students, by sketching, drawing, and

building prototypes or models. The students also regularly presented their designs to the

whole class. Table 1 depicts the main contents of each design session, and as an example,

the activities of one student design team during the sessions (referred to as ‘‘the team’’).


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During the lamp designing stage, the class collaboratively created the ‘‘Lamp Design-

ing’’ view—a kind of on-screen workspace or bulletin board of present activity (with

archives)—in the Knowledge Forum database. The core of KF is a multimedia database

consisting of knowledge created and organized by the participants. In the ‘‘Lamp

Designing’’ view, the students wrote their design ideas and design goals, scanned and

saved their design sketches, and provided conceptual explanations for their design

solutions.

Data collection and methods of data analysis

Our investigation within the Artifact project relies on extensive video recordings of

classroom practices. The lamp designing process was recorded almost entirely, except for

the completion of the prototypes and the final presentations, which were done with the

teacher alone. For the present study, we selected all the lamp designing episodes where

the designer interacted either with the whole class or with the small teams. In addition,

Table 1 The main content of the lamp designing sessions

Number ofsession

Main content of the session and the team’s activities

1 • Designer’s presentation and whole-class discussion on different themes related to lampand light designing

• First design task was given for homework: examining and analyzing existing lamps

2 • Students’ presentations on existing lamps• Forming of the student design teams• The second design task was given: designing new lamps• The team began their lamp design process by developing design ideas.

3 • Repetition of the second design task• The team worked on their chosen design idea, a checkered pendant lamp, by designing

some of its details

4 • The team worked in KF, elaborating their design ideas and considering the materials andthe expenses related to the lamp. At the end of the session, the team designed the heightof the lamp.

5 • Designer’s presentation on different light bulbs• The team designed the measurements of their lamp, and drew it in its natural context/

environment

6 • Designer’s introduction to different kind of representations for the lamp (technicaldrawings, prototypes, models, scale-models)

• Team presentations on proceedings of the design process• The team started to construct the prototype of the lamp

7 • Team presentations on their chosen representation techniques• The team constructed and colored their prototype

8 • The team continued elaborating details and preparing the prototype. The prototype wasfinished.

9 • The team worked in KF, considering coloring alternatives and the name of their design

10 • Designer’s introduction on preparing the final presentations.• All the teams pulled together their notes from KF and prepared poster presentations of

the lamps.• The team reconsidered the name of the lamp and drew the lamp to the poster in its real

context/environment.

11 • Final presentations (process ? product) by all the teams


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we selected the small-team episodes before and after the interaction with the designer, in

order to analyze how the designer’s support was taken up by the students. These epi-

sodes were further segmented into smaller design events (f = 161), each distinguishable

from the others on the basis of the noticeably different content or context (Chi 1997;

Derry 2007). The length of the events varied from a few minutes to over 15 min. One

event was a coherent whole, beginning from the point where the designer started

interacting with the students, and ending when their interaction was drawn to an end and

something else (like peer collaboration) began. For example, the designer’s interaction

with one team on some particular issue was identified as one design event. Besides the

video material, we also analyzed the notes and annotations in the KF ‘‘Lamp Designing’’

view. The analysis on both the video material and the database was performed with some

standard procedures of qualitative content analysis (Chi 1997) with the help of ATLAS/ti

software.

In the present study, we focused on implementing design practices, which was the

main activity during the lamp designing process. First, we identified the obstacles that

the students faced in employing these practices, and second, the scaffolding activities

(including both social and material scaffolds) that the designer used to support over-

coming the obstacles (cf. Quintana et al. 2004). A data-driven approach to categorizing

both the obstacles and the scaffolding activities was employed, producing the following

four main categories of scaffolding. While implementing the design practices, the

designer (1) provided structure for the design tasks, (2) supported externalization andenvisioning of design ideas, (3) facilitated idea elaboration, and (4) supported pro-fessional techniques of external representation. Each of these was further segmented

into several specific scaffolding strategies, which will be presented in the ‘‘Results’’

Section.

Two independent coders classified approximately 15% of the designer’s scaffolding

activities, resulting an inter-rater reliability of .88, which was considered satisfactory. To

provide an overall view of the project, we also included the teacher-designer and the

teacher-student interaction episodes in the analysis. However, the analysis of the teacher’s

activities was not within the scope of the present article; our aim was to describe the

teacher’s role in the process at a more general level.

Results

The aim of the present study was to explore the role of social and material scaffolds in

implementing the authentic practices of professional designing in an elementary classroom.

We identified four scaffolding activities that the designer used to support the students;

further, each of these included several specific scaffolding strategies (Table 2).

The design practices were mainly implemented in the work of the student design teams.

The students created, elaborated, experimented, and tested their design ideas, and the

designer supported this with various social and material scaffolds. He circulated in the

classroom and guided the students into the practices of professional designing by providing

continuous support and feedback to each team. The students also spontaneously asked for

his feedback or clarification for some specific issues they came across in their designing. In

what follows, we will first describe the designer’s scaffolding activities and some of his

scaffolding strategies in detail. Then we will discuss the teacher’s role and the use of

Knowledge Forum during the lamp designing process. Excerpts from the video material

and the database will be provided.


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Providing structure for the design task

Part of design expertise is the ability to see meaningful patterns in complex, open-ended,

and ill-defined design problems. For learners, this can be overwhelming, and useful

boundaries are needed for structuring complex tasks (Quintana et al. 2004). The designer

provided structure for the lamp designing task by identifying the design constraints, and by

focusing attention on the needs related to the lamps.

The design constraints were established through the examination of existing lamps. The

designer asked the students to choose a particularly good or bad lamp, and present the

reasons for their evaluations to the whole class at the next session. The relevant factors of

evaluation were drawn together in a whole-class discussion:

Excerpt 1. Whole-class discussion on design constraints

(Session 1. Designer’s presentation. Video data 27.02.2004)

Designer: —Then, let’s now go over what you need to pay attention to when selecting

your light source. Well, in my opinion, actually let’s ask you first, what do

you believe you should pay attention to when selecting a light source?

Jenny1: How much it lights up the area

Designer: How much it lights up the area

Theo: How much it costs

Designer: Cost. For example, this (points at classroom lamp) lamp doesn’t cost a lot.—

Other ideas?

Anne: Appearance

Designer: The appearance is one, which is pretty important, but in my opinion is not the

most important factor when selecting a light source. But it’s important

Theo: And what properties the light has

Designer: Exactly, what properties can a light have?

Table 2 The designer’s scaffolding activities and specific scaffolding strategies in implementing designpractices

Designer’s scaffolding activities Specific scaffolding strategies

1. Providing structure for the design task a. Focusing attention on the needs for the designb. Identifying the design constraints

2. Supporting the externalization and envisioningof design ideas

a. Providing professional terms for describing ideasb. Providing tools and materials for visualizing ideasc. Demonstrating how to use sketches and artifacts for

visualizing

3. Facilitating idea elaboration a. Focusing attention on aspects that need elaborationb. Providing domain knowledge/language/tools to

support elaborationc. Modeling alternative solutions

4. Supporting professional techniques of externalrepresentation

a. Guiding to use real measurements while sketching/prototyping

b. Providing tools/material for sketching/prototypingc. Providing hands-on support for handling tools and

materials

1 All proper names are pseudonyms.


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These factors for evaluation, as well as other information concerning the examination of

existing lamps, were also collected in a KF note. The teacher wrote the note on the shared

view (i.e., the teacher’s computer screen shared through the data projector) while the

designer was discussing with the class, and later the designer checked the content of the

note. Thus, the emerging ideas were documented in real-time and saved in the database for

later reflection. The system of having the teacher (or a student) making notes on classroom

discussion had proven to be useful in the earlier phases of the Artifact project (see Viilo

et al. 2011), and it was also used throughout the lamp designing project. Through the

shared view, the themes discussed were visible for reflection and comments, and all the

proposed ideas and knowledge were constantly available for further improvement and

discussion (cf. Bereiter 2002; Puntambekar and Kolodner 2005).

The students presented their examinations of existing lamps to the whole class, and

also made KF notes based on their investigations. The presentations and the notes

revealed that the students were well able to analyze many properties (e.g., ability to adjust

and direct the light, quality of the light) related to the lamps. However, it was more

difficult for the students to explain why the lamps had certain properties and how these

were related to the purpose of the lamp’s use. While the designer was introducing the task

of designing new lamps, he asked the students specifically to consider the needs of the

user (i.e., where could it be used and what is it used for) for the lamp as the starting point

of designing. In addition, the teacher wrote the designer’s instructions in a KF note, which

was visible through the shared view while the students started developing their design

ideas. The instructions helped the students to focus their attention on the needs of the

lamp; beyond the superficial aspects (e.g., appearance) that novice designers tend to

concentrate on.

Supporting externalization and envisioning of design ideas

The main activities of the student teams were creating, elaborating, experimenting, and

testing design ideas by sketching, drawing, and building prototypes or models. Producing

several design ideas was rather easy for the students, but externalizing them for reflection

and evaluation was more challenging. The initial ideas were—according to the students’

own words—clear inside their heads, but they did not have the skills to fully externalize

and objectify them verbally or visually. The designer supported the externalization and

envisioning of students’ design ideas by providing professional terms for describing ideas,

providing tools and materials for visualizing ideas, and demonstrating how to use sketches

and artifacts for visualizing.

Envisioning the not-yet-existent lamps appeared to be difficult for the students and

required both social and physical scaffolding. For example, Ann and Natalie were

designing a pendant lamp and had a hard time imagining their lamp from different angles.

The designer was busy with other teams and only explained briefly that they have to draw

the side view and the cross section of their lamp. The girls did not completely understand

these instructions and ended up drawing a picture with a view from more than one angle.

Then the designer and the teacher improvised a demonstration with paper cups and the

team’s drawing (Fig. 1).

Simple physical scaffolds, such as paper cups and drawings were central to the teams’

understanding; the demonstration helped the girls not only to realize the side view of their

pendant, but also gain the knowledge of how to envision the lamp from different angles.

For expert designers this is basic knowledge, but novices, such as elementary students,

have to learn how it is possible to envision in detail something only imagined, that does not


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yet exist. Scaffolds helped the students to compensate for the ‘‘bootstrapping problem’’ of

mastering rich domain knowledge that they do not yet have; it transformed the tasks and at

the same time helped students to build more knowledge for future use (Quintana et al.

2004). The use of material scaffolds revealed the fundamental role of materially embodied

processes in design activity.

From which direction is this drawn, from straight

Um, it's um...

(Teacher) Has it been turned side ways or how should it be?

Well no, because you’re looking at it from different an les, like so.

One picture always shows onl one an le.

On this side it's been drawn this way

Let's try it again, so, if you look at it from below it looks like this ri ht?

Yea Mm

Yea so, then you need to find out what it looks like when you look at it from here sidewa s.

Let's imagine that these are the lamps. Think what they'd look like from the side.

But that's like half a circle

Yea, it doesn't matter

That's what it’d probably be like.

Yea, I think that one’s okay, but what about the other side? This isn't that ood

Well, haha…

Haha, how do we

But imagine that this comes like, this.

g

y

g

g

y

draw it?

gdown?

Fig. 1 The designer and the teacher demonstrate how to visualize a lamp from different angles


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Facilitating idea elaboration

Elaborating the different aspects of the designs was difficult for the students, because of

their lack of knowledge of what is possible, relevant, and productive (cf. Quintana et al.

2004). The recognition of potential is an essential part of expert’s knowledge, furthermore,

it is the main thing that distinguishes creative and non-creative expertise (Bereiter and

Scardamalia 1993). The designer facilitated the elaboration of students’ design ideas by

focusing their attention on those aspects that needed elaboration, by providing domain

knowledge, language and tools, and by modeling alternative solutions.

At session 2, the student teams started developing design ideas, but Rebecca and

Michelle were not sure what exactly they were supposed to do. They asked the designer for

clarification; he first reminded them to consider the needs that the lamp was to address, and

then focused their attention to those aspects that required elaboration, for example, whether

there should be the ability to direct and adjust the light. Rebecca and Michelle started to

write down and sketch their ideas, talking enthusiastically with each other. After a while

they faced an obstacle in describing one detail of their design:

Excerpt 2. Searching for suitable terms

(Session 2. Small team designing. Video data 04.03.2004)

Rebecca: (describing the lamp with her hands)—and then from here there come a hose-

like contraption, well not really a hose but like the vacuum cleaner’s hose, or

at least in shape and then like, haha, from here to here, and then it’d become

this kind of lamp, it’d go from here to here and it’d become a vacuum

cleaner’s hose. And then here would be this light thing

Michelle: Yea, just like that, it’s like on the wall and then it hangs from this kind of

thing and has like

Rebecca: Um…okay

Michelle: How about we write that the light, um… from the center comes this kind of

tubes

(Rebecca starts writing)Michelle: Come, but don’t use the word tubes

Rebecca: This kind of hose like a vacuum cleaners

Michelle: Noo… nothing like that

Rebecca: But how else can we describe it then?

When the girls went back to the designer for feedback, he realized that they wanted to

use a swan neck (a flexible shaft used in lamps) in their lamp. He reminded them of the

term, and later he also brought a swan neck to the classroom to support the elaboration of

the design ideas. Besides providing design knowledge, language, and tools the designer

also modeled alternative solutions for the students’ designs, offering them new ways to

consider the problem or its solutions. At session 6, Rebecca and Michelle discussed the

shape of their lamp’s shade with the designer:

Excerpt 3. Modeling alternative solutions

(Session 6. Small team designing. Video data 18.03.2004)

Designer: Yea, now we could begin putting the lamp shade to its natural size

Michelle: But you can’t really because it’s not cone shaped

Rebecca: Yea

Designer: Yea, so I was thinking if you cut some kind of like petal shaped papers and

then glu them to one another


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Michelle: But then it will become cone shaped while it should be circular

Rebecca: (using hands to show) Yea, or like that

Michelle: (using hands to show) Like this

Designer: Yea, I understand but if we can get even a bit closer to it

Michelle: No it’s [inaudible]

Designer: No I didn’t mean, yea I understand that it will become like this, but if we

these, what kind of shape would it be then, like cutting these tear shaped bits,

and then glueing or taping them to one another

In their final model for the lamp, Rebecca and Michelle used cardboard according to the

designer’s suggestion. The swan neck was imitated with a flexible plastic pipe, with a wire

inside.

Supporting professional techniques of external representation

Representing design ideas requires knowledge of various techniques of external repre-

sentation, and skills to use the techniques as a matter of routine, and as tools for developing

design ideas. Hence, learning of design practices also includes learning of different varied

techniques, for example, drawing professional illustrations and constructing models and

prototypes. The designer facilitated professional idea representation during the lamp

designing by guiding the students to use real measurements while they were sketching or

prototyping, by providing tools and materials for drawing and constructing models or

prototypes, and by providing hands-on support for handling the tools and materials.

Deciding the measurements of the lamps was a big issue across the whole process of

designing. The students were surprised that they had to decide the measurements them-

selves and use the real measurements while they were sketching and prototyping. They

tended to sketch their ideas in freehand, and the designer repeatedly reminded them to use

the real measurements in their drawings. He asked the students to use rulers while they

were drawing, and also provided different kinds of professional measuring tools, for

example, measuring tape. In addition, while they were constructing the lamp models and

prototypes, he provided a range of tools and materials. Some of them (like cardboard, tape,

wire, paper cups, Plasticine) were found in the school, but many materials the designer

bought from the local stores (for example, plastic and copper pipes, metal net, plastic

bowls, paints). Constructing the models and prototypes was time consuming and required a

great deal of hands-on support from the designer and also from the teacher. The designer

considered the suitable materials together with the students and helped them handle the

tools and the materials.

The teacher’s role and the use of Knowledge Forum

While the designer was the domain expert in the classroom, the teacher provided her

experience and knowledge of the students, their learning processes, the classroom prac-

tices, and school resources (e.g. tools, materials). Her role was to act as an organizer, asupport for the designer and for the students, and a KF expert. She had the main

responsibility for organizing the project’s timetable and ensuring the availability of nec-

essary tools and materials. The designer also leaned on her knowledge of the students’

personal qualities while she and he were forming the student design teams. Naturally, the

teacher also provided support for the students during small team work, because the

designer simply did not have time to help everybody sufficiently. The teacher also


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repeatedly made sure that all the students’ design artifacts (sketches, drawings, models)

were safely stored in the classroom.

The teacher supported the designer’s scaffolding activities by, for example, repeating

his questions or instructions. At session 6, the designer introduced different options to

represent the lamp designs. After briefly explaining the different alternatives, he discussed

them with each team, making suggestions of their possible representational techniques.

The whole class was listening to the discussions, and the teacher again collected the

information the designer provided in a KF note on the shared view. In addition, at the

beginning of the next session, the teacher proposed to the designer that he repeat and

clarify the information on representation techniques:

Excerpt 4. The teacher supports the adopting of the language of designing

(Session 7. Whole-class discussion. Video data 25.03.2004)

Teacher: Could you Tim, go over what these possibilities are, what kind they are, what

it means, what prototype means and what is a working prototype?

Designer: Who knows what a prototype is?

Theo: A kind of model which shows how everything works

Designer: Exactly, a natural size model which works. What then is the difference

between a prototype and the finished product?

Theo: The only difference is that, umm, there is only one copy and it’s not mass-

produced

Designer: Yea, you can use different materials as in the final product. So you could

make the prototype out of cardboard if you wish. What then, is the mock-up?

Dane: Something that doesn’t work

Designer: Yea, but it’s the right size but it doesn’t work. Then you could make a

miniature model out of it, for example, if you have a plan for a foot-lamp,

which is big enough that it’d be easier to make a miniature model instead of a

mock-up. If a miniature or mock-up isn’t practical then you could just draw a

blueprint, which you need to do anyway before the model can be made

Teacher: Are we trying to do the blueprints in full-scale or miniature scale?

The teacher had realized that the students were not familiar with terms such as ‘pro-

totype’ or ‘mock-up’, and she supported the designer by reinforcing the design terminology

he provided. Her experience and knowledge of the students’ capabilities supported the

distribution of expertise, making specific design knowledge more accessible for them.

Knowledge Forum was a new tool for the designer, so it was mainly the teacher who

suggested and instructed KF use. The teacher introduced KF’s various aspects to the

designer, instructed him and the students how to use them, and used shared view to support

participants’ reflection. However, KF was primarily used as a tool for storing and sharing

designs, rather than serving as a genuine discursive knowledge building environment. The

students mainly wrote notes after face-to-face activities, iterating and saving the ideas

already discussed. For example, the students made hand-written notes and sketches for

their first presentations, and later the notes were re-written and the sketches scanned in KFs

‘‘Lamp Designing’’ view. The teams produced an average of 7 notes and the mean note-

reading activity was 22,7%, which was considered rather low database activity. The teams

summarized their individual notes on existing lamps in a rise-above note, and continued

presenting their design ideas and solutions with build-on notes (Fig. 2).

The slides the designer used in his presentations were scanned to the view by the

teacher, and she also inserted photos of the students’ prototypes and set up links to three of

the views created in the earlier phases of the Artifact Project. The designer wrote four


123

notes; three of them were actually written by the teacher during classroom activities, and

later checked by the designer. The notes included instructions for the analysis of existing

lamps, for the lamp designing, and for the final presentations, as well as a list of possible

representation techniques. In addition, the teacher wrote two notes, suggesting to sum-

marize all the previous knowledge concerning lamps and light, and summarizing the

questions provided by the designer in his annotations. The designer wrote 16 annotations;

the majority (f = 12, 75%) concerned the students’ notes related to their presentations on

existing lamps, and the designer’s comments were aimed at helping the students in

explicating and sharing their knowledge.

Although discourse was not very active in the database, the shared view was actively

used as the collective memory of the community throughout the sessions. Through the

shared view, both the students’ and designer’s knowledge was constantly available to

viewing by all the participants, promoting collaborative design thinking. Accordingly, the

point was not to focus on producing a large number of textual notes to KF database but to

participate in the actual design of materially embodied artifacts. In this regard, KF pro-

vided a shared working space that assisted in documenting various aspects of the process

and mediating classroom activities in many ways.

Discussion

The present investigation reported a longitudinal experiment in which elementary school

students appropriated authentic practices of designing under the guidance of a professional

Fig. 2 Part of the ‘‘Lamp Designing’’ view in Knowledge Forum database


123

designer and the teacher. The aim of the overall project was to engage students in simu-

lating professional practices and building a deeper understanding of the entire holistic

design processes, i.e., working with complex design problems, and dealing with different

kinds of representations as well as knowledge and constraints related to designing. In the

present study, we focused on the scaffolding activities of participating expert in order to

understand how to facilitate these design based activities. The development of professional

ways of thinking and acting plays an important role in encouraging young people to tackle

the creative and technical solutions of the design field. The designer’s participation opened

up the world of designing for the students, helping them to appropriate the basic tools and

practices of professional designing. This allowed the students to engage in productive

design processes and to gain new insights into the processes and mechanisms of designing.

Furthermore, having the professional designer working with the students provided students

with the opportunity to gain the full potential that solving complex design problems can

offer; the potential is related to the inherently embodied and interdisciplinary nature of

design learning.

Validation of conceptual knowledge in materially embodied practice makes design a

worthwhile cognitive and intellectual experience. In the present study, the students were

very much working with ‘‘tertiary’’, imagined and envisioned objects, along with actual

artifacts. Although the students were guided to utilize various external representations,

working with the imagined lamps was very hard for them (cf. Fortus et al. 2004). The

various design artifacts that the designer brought into the classroom (e.g., photos, lamps)

and the artifacts that the students created in the course of their designing (e.g., sketches,

drawings, models) carried the tacit working knowledge of designing, enabling the inex-

perienced students to pursue genuine design inquiry. The collaborative emergence (Sawyer

2005) of novelty often takes place through shifting between the levels of knowing, from

practical explorations to visual and conceptual representations (Hakkarainen 2009;

Hakkarainen et al. 2004). Thus, the actual implementation of ideas in design of materially

embodied but knowledge-laden artifacts offers unique opportunities for learning. Dealing

with concrete materials offers probes which evoke novel possibilities of, for example,

learning spatial, functional, and aesthetic aspects. More generally, the analysis of the

process promises to give a different and valuable perspective on goal directed, embodied

and material cognitive activities which aim at a practically adequate outcome.

Design is an inherently interdisciplinary activity: the problem-solving strategies and

practices of designing can be applied for learning something other than design (Davis et al.

1997). Design based teaching and learning concerns the ways in which design activities

can be addressed in the integrated curricula (Davis 1999a,b). Integrating designing for

learning mathematics (Jurow 2005) and science (Kolodner et al. 2003; Roth 1998) is seen

as a valuable process, which allows students to construct a deep understanding of scientific

principles (e.g. Fortus et al. 2004; Kolodner 2002). There are several inquiry-based pro-

grams, such as Learning by Design (LBD, Kolodner 2002; Kolodner et al. 2003) and

Design-Based Science (DBS, Fortus et al. 2004), that purposefully use design as a vehicle

for learning science. In the present study, several school subjects, such as mathematics,

physics, mother tongue, and art, were integrated in the process of lamp designing. How-

ever, Design and Technology is also a compulsory subject studied at elementary and

secondary levels in many countries. Designing is seen as powerful and complex activity, in

which different entities and constraints are dealt with in each design context. This high-

lights the multiple emergencies that shape design processes and design artifacts.

Designing deals with how and why questions rather than with what questions. To use

designing as a method for learning may be difficult for the teachers, who do not have their


123

own experiences of similar ways of working with open-ended problems. Designing

requires that problem-solving skills be constructed within the context of forming artefacts.

Since there is multitude of suitable solutions rather than a single solution for a design

problem, it is difficult to know in advance the phases, contents, and outcomes of the design

process. In the present case, the designer planned a specific task to analyze, first indi-

vidually and later collaboratively, the present design context (i.e., analysis of present day

lamps in various purposes). Further, facilitating the explication and analysis of more

specific design, i.e., internal constraints that emerged during the process, was crucial for

developing a deeper understanding of the purpose and function of the lamps. Developing

and elaborating design ideas and especially externalizing (i.e., sketching and prototyping)

the ideas is a central aspect of design learning. In the present case, the professional

designer was able to provide domain-specific knowledge and practices to facilitate all the

phases of designing; several studies (Davis et al. 1997; Fortus et al. 2004; Kolodner 2002;

Kolodner et al. 2003), however, indicate that teachers need special support and training to

do the same.

The present study emphasizes that deep understanding of designing requires acknowl-

edging the iterative and embodied nature of the processes involved in designing. Current

research in design learning highlights that teachers need their own experiences of designing,

that is, engaging in iterative cycles of deliberate practice and reflection over long periods of

time (Kolodner 2002; Kolodner et al. 2003). Furthermore, teacher’s competencies can be

complemented with co-teaching (teachers from different subject domains working together)

and community partnerships (involving parents and experts from the surrounding com-

munity). Own experience in the professional ‘‘designerly’’ ways of thinking and acting, as

well as distributing knowledge among teachers and domain experts opens up possibilities to

gain the full benefits, which design learning can potentially provide.

Acknowledgments The present study has been supported by the Academy of Finland (under project no.1217068) and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. We would also like to thank the designer, the class teacher,and the students for their participation in the study. Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, the designer, and theteacher co-designed the lamp designing project through repeated cycles. Kaiju Kangas assisted and wasresponsible for video recording of the project. Kaiju Kangas and Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen developed themethod of analyzing the data, and they wrote the present article, together with Kai Hakkarainen. We wish tothank Hal White for editing the language and Otto Seitamaa for translating the excerpts from Finnish.

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Documents

Design expert’s participation in elementary students’ collaborative design process