Designerly Thinking by Susan McLaren
Pause to ponder
By Susan McLaren, Senior lecturer/Programme director at the Institute for Education,
Teaching and Leadership at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh.
Designerly thinking: purpose play useful fun
Designerly thinking requires us to explore problems, situations, scenarios and to
interrogate issues, happenings, people, products and surroundings. It helps raise the
questions and ignite the sparks of curiosity that instigate activity. Through designerly
thinking we develop the ability to challenge the past and scrutinise the present and
create the future.
Designerly thinking encourages us to have ideas, be playful with purpose and spend
time in useful fun. Designerly thinking allows us to take on challenges (risky or
cautious), grow our ideas and arrive at potential solutions.
We may choose to adopt a systematic series of small steps or take intuitive leaps
forward. We learn to persevere when confronted by moving goal posts and changing
rules and parameters, overcoming personal limitations and technical know how.
We develop our understandings through ‘brains-on-hands-on’, translating our insights
and findings in to an informed concept. We seek to prove our designerly thinking
when we communicate and share ideas with others in order to test and appraise,
reflect on, argue and defend the synthesised proposal.
Effective Engineering
Effective Engineering requires designerly thinking. Engineering involves creatively
thinking the unthinkable; balancing and juggling user requirements, function,
resources, aesthetics and values. Contrary to what some may believe engineering has
no right or wrong. Effective engineering takes note of not only cultural,
environmental, economic and social contexts, but also ethics, morals and beliefs.
Effective engineering makes demands on the ability to work with predictions and
intuition, create, select and apply knowledge, visualise and model, through interaction
between hand and mind, to determine an optimised solution appropriate for the
situation.
Engineering <>design engineering<> designing
When is one not the other?
Is it helpful to differentiate between engineering and designing?
Engineering is thought of by some as entirely technical, scientific and mathematical,
at the expense of aesthetic sensibilities, values and human centred playfulness.
Equally, designing is thought of by some as entirely aesthetic and emotion driven with
no substance of technical underpinning. These two polarised perspectives portray a
highly limited and ill conceived understanding.
It is important that an informed and balanced exposition of designing and engineering
is presented through rich and authentic contexts for learning. Designing and
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Designerly Thinking by Susan McLaren
engineering provide relevant ways to develop high order thinking skills. The
interconnection of processes, concepts, purpose and understanding allows science
knowledge to serve usefully by sometimes making explicit what the innate human
ingenuity considered an effective solution, sometimes opening up potential that is
otherwise hidden and unused.
Consider the characteristics required for influential and effective engineers /
engineering. Perhaps these include:
• A growth mindset
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Enjoys modelling building – physical and well as digital and mathematics
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Curiosity
Initiative
Perseverance
Ability to make connections, cause and effect
willingness to draw learning and knowledge from any discipline
intellectual risk taking
Different ways of looking; different ways of seeing to redefine problems,
challenges, scenario creation to open up thinking; spark finding
Revels in ’wicked problems’
Takes interest in purpose and authenticity in actions and results
Considers society, cultures and contexts
Recognises importance of collaboration
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Interested in the bigger picture – the macro and the micro
Reasoning and interconnected thinking creativity
Personal self confidence and ambition, energy and versatility,
Thinking the unthinkable, pondering the imponderable
Consider the characteristics required for influential and effective designers /
designing. Is there an identifiable difference? The boundaries between designing and
engineering are tricky to determine. The question of what, if anything, differentiates
the two has been the subject of many debates and offers a rich area for further
discussion.
Planning models for scaffolding designerly thinking experiences
Practitioners can plan holistic learning experiences which focus on creative
engineering and design thinking through macro and micro design challenges. This
requires foresight and care. To empower learners, as novice designers, to take
procedural control requires the teacher to avoid any imposition of an artificial
procedure of designing e.g. formulaic methods of designing, template approaches and
staged models and methods of designing. The learners gain increased ownership of
the action and responsibility for their learning by making design decisions related to
the challenge(s).
The key planning decisions which frame the learning experience can be made in
advance. It is not possible, nor desirable, to identify all the necessary learning
required by the learners, in advance of the activity. Designerly thinking and
engineering involves developing the ability to deal with uncertainty. This is the modus
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Designerly Thinking by Susan McLaren
operandi of creativity. With design thinking as a key learning intention, we encourage
learners to ask the ‘what if’ and ‘why’ questions that act as drivers for seeking more
information, sparking the need-to-know approach of learning for life. Planned
teacher-learner interactions (from the predictable) and responsive interventions (from
the unanticipated) remain important to the progression of learning. Handled well,
these opportunities help students develop a breadth and depth of explicit technological
knowledge and experience. Teachers need to ensure that their interventions also
include explicit questioning and application, of mathematical and scientific
understanding, in addition to knowledge of design practices.
There is evidence i that at times, learners display limited explicit knowledge about the
properties of materials, scientific and engineering principles related to tasks when
engaged in designing. They are limited in their range of thinking strategies, skills and
vocabulary to progress their work and explain their understandings. Therefore the
teacher should be prepared to provide input, direction and information to facilitate and
develop.
One useful model of planning for educational design activity is based on devising a
series of teacher-directed ‘small tasks’ which furnish the learners with some starters
which they may choose to apply when presented with the more open creative practical
design challenge. It is in the design challenge (big task) that the learners have control
of the design decisions and procedural approaches, within the framework of the
teacher’s planning.
Alternatively, the design challenge is the context in which the teacher has planned
specific knowledge, understanding and skill inputs to be presented at different points
in the experience. These directed teacher inputs (small tasks) add to the repertoire of
the learners and either scaffolds their progress, supports their next steps or used as a
spring board from which to continue, but in different direction. ii
Which ever model of planning is adopted, the challenge for teacher is in finding a
balance between
a) creating experiential tasks that allow students to find authenticity and meaning, and
have genuine ownership of the design decisions and process through which they
arrive at a proposal and
(b) being able to foresee potential issues, learning obstacles and being ready to
intervene to aid the development of their personal and collective technological,
scientific, mathematical, design and engineering knowledge, values and skills.
To explore more about designerly thinking, what this offers teaching and learning and
how this relates to social constructivism, experiential and situated learning, and higher
order thinking skills, revisit Kolb, Dewey, Bruner and Vygotsky and others. Also if
interest is Atherton’s revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This places ‘creating’ as the
highest of all the Higher Order Thinking skills.
Below are some suggestions for further reading. These articles, reflections and
research studies, selected from among many, are interesting starters to explore
educational issues and ideas related to design, technology, science, engineering,
creativity.
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Designerly Thinking by Susan McLaren
i
See for example- McRobbie, C.J., Stein, S. J., & Ginns, I. (2001). Exploring Designerly Thinking
of Students as Novice Designers. Research in Science Education, 31(1), 91-116.
ii
See Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (1996) Technology Education in Scottish
Schools SCCC Dundee and for illustrative examples of these models of planning
see:
Nuffield Design and Technology Project : Design Solutions www.primarydandt.org.uk
and www.secondarydandt.org.uk
and
Barlex, D and Edwards, P. ( 2000) Primary Technology in Scottish Schools Learning and Teaching
Scotland and Nuffield Foundation
Further reading and useful references
WEB LINKS
Atherton J S (2010) Learning and Teaching; Constructivism in learning [On-line] UK: Available:
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/constructivism.htm Accessed: 8 January 2011
ATHERTON J S (2010) Learning and Teaching; Bloom's taxonomy [On-line] UK: Available:
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm Accessed: 8 January 2011
BOOKS
Barlex, D. (ed) (2007) Design & technology for the Next Generation: a collection of provocative
pieces. CliffeCo
Barlex, D. and Pitt, J. (2000) Interaction: The relationship between science and design and technology
in the secondary school curriculum, London: Engineering Council
Bucciarelli, L. (1996) Designing engineers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kimbell, R. & Perry, D., (2001) Design and technology in a knowledge economy: a distinctive model of
teaching and learning. pp. 20 Engineering Council, London UK
Kimbell, R.. & Stables, K., (2007) Researching Design Learning 360pp Science, Technology,
Education Library Vol 34. Springer
Kimbell, R. (2008) “Design Performance: Digital Tools: Research Processes” in Middleton H (eds).
Research Methods for Technology Education, Rotterdam Sense Publishers
Lawson, B. (2005) How designers Think Architectural Press 4th Edition
Norman, Donald A. (1993) Things that make us smart: Defending human attributes in the age of the
machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Petroski, Henry, (1996) Invention by design: How engineers get from thought to thing. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Web and Journal papers
Asunda, P. and Hill, R. (2007) Critical Features of Engineering Design in
Technology Education Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 44(1) Available online at:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v44n1/pdf/asunda.pdf
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Designerly Thinking by Susan McLaren
Crismond, D. (2001) Learning and using science ideas when doing investigate- and redesign tasks: a
study of naive, novice, and expert designers doing constrained and scaffolded design work. Journal of
Research in Science Teaching, 38(7), 791- 820.
Cross, N. (2001 ) Designerly Way on Knowing : Design Discipline versus Design Science Design
Issues 17, (3) 49-55 Available online at: http://design.open.ac.uk/cross/documents/DesignerlyDesignIssues.pdf
Davis, R.S., I.S. Ginns, and C.J. McRobbie. (2002) Elementary school students’ understandings of
technology concepts. Journal of Technology Education 14(1). Available online at:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v14n1/davis.html
McCormick, R. (2004) Issues of learning and knowledge in technology education. International
Journal of Technology and Design Education 14(1): 21–44
McRobbie, C.J., Stein, S. J., & Ginns, I. (2001). Exploring Designerly Thinking of Students as Novice
Designers. Research in Science Education, 31(1), 91-116.
McRobbie, C. J., Stein, S. J., & Ginns, I. S. (2001). Exploring Designerly Thinking of
Students as Novice Designers. Research in Science Education, 31, 91-116.
Moreland,J, Jones, A, Cowie, B (2006) Enhancing teachers’ PCK through the use of planning
frameworks in primary technology PATT18 Glasgow pp.370-375 Available online at:
http://www.iteaconnect.org/Conference/PATT/PATT18/fullprog-21a%5B1%5D.pdf
Rogers, G., and J. Wallace.(2000) The wheels of the bus: children design in an early years classroom.
Research in Science and Technological Education 18(1): 127–136
Roth, W.M. (2001) Learning science through technological design. Journal of Research in Science
Teaching 38(7): 768–790
Rowell, P.M., B.J. Gustafson, and S.M. Guilbert. (1999) Engineers in elementary classrooms:
perceptions of learning to solve technological problems. Research in science and technological
education 17(1): 13–109.
Stables, K., & Kimbell, R. (2000).The unpickled portfolio: Pioneering performance assessment in
design and technology. In R. Kimbell (Ed.) Design and Technology International Millennium
Conference (pp. 195-202). Wellesbourne: DATA.
Stein, S. J., McRobbie, C. J., & Ginns, I. S. (2001). Implications of missed opportunities for learning
and assessment in design and technology education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(1), 35-39.
Twyford, J., E.-M. Jarvinen. (2000) The formation of children’s technological concepts: a study of
what it means to do technology from a child’s perspective. Journal of Technology Education 12(1):
32–48. Available online at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v12n1/pdf/twyford.pdf
Wai, K., and M. Siu. (2003) Nurturing all-round engineering and product designers. International
Journal of Technology and Design Education 13(3): 243–254.
Waks, S. & Merdler, M. (2003). Creative Thinking of Practical Engineering Students During
a Design project. Research in Science & Technological Education, 21(1), 101-120.
Welch, M., D. Barlex, and H.S. Lim. (2000) The strategic thinking of novice designers: discontinuity
between theory and practice. Journal of Technology Studies 26(2): 34–44 Available online at:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/Summer-Fall-2000/pdf/welch.pdf
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Welch, M., Barlex, D., & O'Donnell, E. (2006). Elementary students' beliefs about designers and
designing. In E.W.L. Norman, D. Spendlove, & G. Owen-Jackson (Eds.), The D&T Association
International Research Conference 2006 (pp. 165-175).
Williams, P.J.(2010)Technology Eduction to Engineering: A Good Move? Journal of
Technology Studies 36 (2)10-19 Available online at:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/v36/v36n2/pdf/williams.pdf
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