School of Communication and Culture

Design thinking and digital technologies are increasingly
introduced in education to develop children’s design literacy. This
shift demands a change in teachers’ mindsets, capabilities and
approaches to design and technology as well as new teaching
practices. This paper reports on a research-based master's course
developed to address and study the challenges that educators
experience when teaching design in K-12 classes. We investigate
three aspects that we argue are crucial when developing teachers'
capability to teach design literacy to children: (1) ability to
navigate a complex design process, (2) managing digital and
analogue design materials and (3) balancing different modes of
teaching. This paper demonstrates how a combination of design
theory, in-school practice and peer-to-peer learning created a
framework towards educating design educators – a framework
that allowed us to investigate K-12 teachers' development of core
competencies for bringing design and digital fabrication to diverse
students. In addition, the study shows how the framework can
facilitate and support co-development of new teaching practices.