Lesson series ‘Your Turn’ trains children’s design skills
In our rapidly changing society, primary education is expected to teach children a broad set of skills in creativity, empathy and communication. A lesson series for primary education has now been published to teach such 21st-century skills through design projects.
The researchers of ‘Co-design with kids’ performed design cases in primary schools in the province of South-Holland for three years. Besides research publications, they also produce a number of lesson series, the first of which is now available.
This lesson series called ‘Ontwerp een buitenles’ (design an outdoor lesson) is targeted at teachers of group 7-8. Designing an outdoor lesson matches the goals of project partner Jantje Beton to use schoolyards for outdoors education. All design steps are included, from context and problem exploration via developing and testing ideas to giving a convincing design presentation. The lesson series provides practical step-by-step guidance and is supported by various design techniques, pupils’ tool sheets and powerpoint presentations for use in the classroom.
In the coming year, more ready-to-use lesson series will appear on different subjects. Besides, the separate design techniques and tool sheets will become available to compose alternative design projects. The materials are in Dutch, and are freely available for download at www.tudelft.nl/yourturn.
Former IDE colleagues Fenne van Doorn and Maarten van Mechelen have worked on this project, under supervision of Mathieu Gielen and Prof. Pieter Jan Stappers. They cooperated with colleagues from Science Education and Communication (faculty of Applied Sciences).
‘Co-design with Kids’ is a four-year research project, financed by NWO/NRO and executed by TU Delft with a large number of partners.
