Abstract:

In today's globally networked world, information from the most diverse disciplines is available in almost unlimited abundance and varying quality. In order to better prepare pupils to deal with and handle this information, a teaching concept based on a design thinking approach was developed for science lessons and tested in chemistry senior school classes. The skills creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration (4 Cs, Fadel et al., 2017) were especially focused on.

Design thinking is an important approach in companies. It is particularly suitable for complex tasks in which innovative products are to be designed (Plattner, 2012). For industry and especially for chemical industry, the development of new, environmentally friendly compounds and the use of sustainable raw materials as well as the resulting products are a central challenge – and tomorrow's engineers and scientists are today’s students.

It therefore seems sensible to introduce pupils to these requirements at an early stage – and as a systematic multistep process design thinking can also be a useful approach for school teaching (Scheer et al., 2012) as an innovative agile teaching concept to foster students abilities in the 4 Cs and furthermore, in particular, to take into account aspects of education for sustainable development (ESD) (Wolthaus et al. 2023). So far, design thinking approaches in schools have mostly been used in project courses and social science or language subjects. Our intention was to incorporate it into regular science instruction settings.

In order to evaluate an design thinking approach for the subject of chemistry, promising framework conditions were first derived from other research. Then, three teaching modules were developed and carried out in three consecutive years in two parallel courses in 11th, 12th and 13th grade, each with 10 teaching hours. To evaluate this setting, a Design-Based Research approach was proceeded.

Using analysis of students´ learning diaries, it could be proven that the integration of Design Thinking was successful with regard to the 4 Cs. Especially, students' creativity and evaluation skills increased, and the suitability of the framework conditions could be demonstrated.

Furthermore, it was assumed that the intervention could have an influence on the students' image of subject chemistry and students' self-efficacy expectations. In a pre-post survey we could confirm positive effects by using established questionnaires. We also observed that especially low-performing students benefited from the concept.

References:
[1] Fadel, C., Bialik, M., & Trilling, B. (2017). Die vier Dimensionen der Bildung. ZLL21, Zentralstelle für Lernen und Lehren im 21. Jahrhundert e. V .
Plattner, H. (2012). Design thinking research. C. Meinel, & L. Leifer (Eds.). Springer.
[2] Scheer, A., Noweski, C., & Meinel, C. (2012). Transforming constructivist learning into action: Design thinking in education. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 17(3).
[3] Wolthaus, P., Volkmer, J. & Gröger, M. (2023): Mit Design Thinking BNE in den MINT-Unterricht integrieren, MNU 76 (3), S. 228-238.

Keywords:

Design thinking, Teaching Science, ESD.