Teachers’ attitudes to students’ decision making in Design and Craft education

Abstract

Decisionmaking skills are an important part of our everyday activities and general education should give opportunities for children to develop such skills. Design and Craft education aims at giving students knowledge and skills necessary in their daily lives. It offers significant opportunities to improve students’ awareness and understanding to make them able to make knowledgeable choices that can enrich their existence and contribute to the growth of their society. Such awareness and understanding equips pupils with the resources to think more critically and to make informed decisions, whether as students, designers, makers or citizens. This article reports an investigation into the attitudes of icelandic teachers regarding students’ decisionmaking in Design and Craft education. The enquiry sought to establish teachers’ understanding of their profession and their roles with regard to students’ decisionmaking, or to explore beliefs and attitudes of Design and Craft teachers regarding their interaction with students while they make design decisions. The investigation looked at the following questions: 1. What decisionmaking opportunities are included in the Design and Craft curriculum in Iceland? 2. What are teachers’ attitudes regarding decisionmaking in Design and Craft education? 3. What decisionmaking opportunities do teachers give to children when working in Design and Craft? The research was conducted using a phenomenographic approach focusing on teachers’ roles and their understanding of the significance of student autonomy at age 12–14, in particular their understanding of the relationship between students’ decisionmaking, the Icelandic National Curriculum for Design and Craft and education in Design and Craft. The enquiry was carried out in two phases during the school year 2010–2011. The first phase included a review of the national curriculum for Design and Craft. The second phase included 10 interviews with practicing Design and Craft teachers to explore attitudes and strategies underpinning their practice. A semistructured interview schedule was constructed based on a literature review to explore issues like teachers’ implementation of the national curriculum, the effect of books and other sources of information on childrens’ decisionmaking and the ability of children to set criteria for evaluation and to transfer skills to other areas of life. The results of the study reveal that the curriculum include many opportunities for decisionmaking in Design and Craft classes. Teachers, however, believe that it is not feasible to apply some decisionmaking requirements of the curriculum. Another potentially significant outcome for curriculum developers is that children very rarely search for information, or set appropriate criteria to support design decisions. Students rely on teachers and their own past experience in order to reach decisions. Explicit requirements to develop decisionmaking capabilities could well improve the curriculum. Associated formal training in decisionmaking techniques might also improve the quality of children’s decisions during design activities. Another important issue is that there is a positive motivational effect when children take design decisions, and there is an improvement in their participation in their design project when the project is meaningful to them. Despite the fact that international research indicates that decisionmaking is an essential function in adults’ lives, there has been little research undertaken to examine decisionmaking in Design and Craft education in Icelandic schools. While the results of the study indicate the importance of teachers’ involvement supporting their students’ enhancement of decisionmaking skills, a number of additional issues need to be examined to enable guidance for teachers’ formal training. Further research will help to explain how general education and Design and Craft education in particular may provide better opportunities for students to develop design and decisionmaking skills.