Abstract:

Critical thinking is widely recognised as a fundamental outcome of Design and Technology (DT) education, yet limited empirical research has examined how students apply specific critical thinking skills during the design process. This study investigated how DT education student-teachers at the Lesotho College of Education used critical thinking skills during the early phases of the design process, focusing on the problem-structuring and problem-solving phases as conceptualised by Goel and Pirolli (1992).

A qualitative single case study, guided by a constructivist-interpretivist paradigm, was conducted with eight third-year Diploma in Education student-teachers purposively selected from the DT education department. Working in four pairs, participants were presented with an ill-structured task requiring them to design a book support structure for a person studying. Data were generated through a concurrent think-aloud protocol study, supported by video recording and the collection of participants' sketches. The verbal and visual data were transcribed and analysed thematically, using Facione's (2020) six core critical thinking skills, namely interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and self-regulation, as the analytic framework organised around the two early phases of the design process.

All six critical thinking skills were observed across the dataset, though their frequency and distribution differed markedly between phases. Critical thinking skills were applied more frequently during problem-structuring than during problem-solving, suggesting greater cognitive investment in making sense of the problem than in generating solutions. Interpretation, analysis, inference, and explanation were the skills most consistently observed during problem-structuring, as participants worked to make sense of the task, establish its boundaries, and decide what it required of them. Evaluation and self-regulation featured less reliably across groups. In the problem-solving phase, inference dominated as participants weighed options and moved toward preferred solutions. Explanation was present across all four pairs, though self-regulation was largely absent. Three pairs showed no evidence of it at all, and the one pair that did apply it did so only once.

The findings suggest that the critical engagement students brought to the problem-structuring phase did not persist when attention shifted to developing solutions. Evaluative monitoring and self-reflection receded at the stage where design commitments were actually being made. For DT teaching, this suggests that the two phases may need to be treated differently in the classroom: problem-solving, in particular, may require structured occasions that prompt students to interrogate their own reasoning rather than simply proceed with it. The think-aloud method proved useful in surfacing this kind of reasoning, which is ordinarily invisible. As the study was conducted at one institution with a small group of participants, the findings are necessarily limited in scope; research that spans the full design process and engages more diverse student populations would extend what can be concluded.

Keywords:

Critical thinking skills, Design and Technology education, design process, think-aloud protocol, problem-structuring.