Abstract | Of the many skills Design and Technologies teachers are required to awaken and develop in students, the capacity to simply think is perhaps the most fundamental. And for independent, resilient thinking, creativity is just as important as critique. Yet creative thinking in the design process is rarely explicitly taught (Harris, 2016, p. 3), either to students or the teachers who instruct them. Unless students can think flexibly and practise the capacity to innovate and broaden their perspectives, they will be unable to adequately ‘imagine and design in response to “preferred futures”’ (ACARA). And the literature of both the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and the International Baccalaureate (IB) – plus, more broadly, the society in which students will live and work – require them to do so. It is therefore imperative that we move beyond the assumption that creative thinking is innate. Creativity theory (Harris, 2016; Runco, 2007, 2014) suggests that creative thinking can be explicitly communicated, fostered and practised. However, this imperative suggests that familiar dichotomies must be dismantled, including what Martin and Owen-Jackson describe as an ongoing discipline debate: ‘Is design and technology about making or knowing?’ (2013). This debate purports that in Design and Technologies (D&T), propositional knowledge may be prioritised over procedural knowledge (theoretical and conceptual design knowledge vs practical making skills and tacit knowledge) or vice versa. However, Martin and Owen-Jackson conclude that not only are these types of knowledge inseparable, they actually inform one another (2013, p. 71). The debate is echoed in the notion of critical and creative thinking styles as mutually exclusive, and also the ‘art (right-brain thinking) or science (left-brain thinking)’ polarity (D. A. Edwards, 2008). But instead of becoming mired in such semantic inquiry, our aim must be practical: to cultivate the capacity for ingenuity and imagination in D&T teachers. This project examines creative thinking tools and strategies, their use and value, and where in design processes they are being employed. Initial findings indicate that creative thinking skills cannot be assumed and that tools themselves often need to be redesigned, at least subtly, for the most effective use in D&T education. |
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