Teaching Design: Taking the First Steps: Teaching Students How to Think like Designers Involves Preparation on the Part of Both the Teacher and the Student

In the last decade, teaching technology education through design has acquired greater standing as a methodology. According to Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology (STL) (ITEA, 2000), "[design] is as fundamental to technology as inquiry is to science and reading is to language arts" (p.90). However, for many technology education teachers, the teaching of design can be intimidating. Design is one of those slippery subjects that has few concrete definitions and no singular process model. A human mind engaged in design is one that should move freely between organization and chaos, structure and disorder, discipline and whimsy. Therefore, the teaching of design needs to involve much more than instruction on the manipulative skills of using tools or making drawings, more than instruction on the intellectual knowledge of how a task can be done. In short, teaching design within the context of technology education must involve teaching students how to actively use both their minds and their hands in order to be creative, inventive problem solvers. Petroski (1985) makes a persuasive argument for the inherent capacity that every child has to be an engineer and designer of technology. Playing with common childhood toys, such as building blocks, modeling dough, and art supplies like crayons and paper, indicates the instinctive abilities that all children possess to design and make things. These abilities may not be realized or fully developed in many young people. The formalized nature of most school curriculum structures may not facilitate the development of these abilities and may, in fact, cause them to atrophy or be forgotten (Amabile, 1989; Skromme, 1989). The very nature of the thinking processes involved in design may run contrary to the more traditional thinking structures encouraged in most school curricula. The approach to the thinking processes necessary for design is synergistic in nature, which the Random House College Dictionary (1980) defines as, "working together; cooperative" (p. 1333). The designer needs to see and work with the big picture as well as all of the constituent pieces. The definition of design in STL demonstrates such a synergy when it states: Design is the first step in the making of a product or system. Without design, the product or system cannot be made effectively. Technological design is a distinctive process with a number of defining characteristics: it is purposeful; it is based on certain requirements; it is systematic, it is iterative; it is creative; and there are many possible solutions. These fundamental attributes are central to the design and development of any product or system, from primitive flint knives to sophisticated computer chips. (p. 91) According to Koberg and Bagnall (1991), the means for thinking in such a synergistic manner involves control by the mind over the thinking processes of the brain and its two hemispheres. The two halves of the brain tend to process input differently. The authors distinguish these differences in processing by describing the left hemisphere as the "thinker" and the right hemisphere as the "sensor/ behaver"(p. 19). Making the shift to the synergistic thinking processes involved with design can cause problems for both the teacher and the student. This article will examine the strategies that technology educators can use to expand and refine their methodologies of teaching students how to use design within this synergistic context. There are two principal obstacles to teaching about design. These are (a) teacher preparation for teaching design and (b) the need to facilitate and encourage students in making a variety of attitude shifts. Teacher Preparation for Teaching Design Formal training on the techniques, or processes, of design (technical sketching, drafting, CAD, model making, etc. …