The design thinking process is an integral part of any STEM class. In STEM, students learn how to apply their knowledge and skills to develop solutions to real-world problems. However, many students who are new to STEM struggle with the iterative nature design thinking.
In most other courses, students are expected to have the “right” answer. When they pay attention and work hard, they expect to get a good grade on their assignment and move on to the next thing… But this is not how STEM works.
Failure is a central part of the design thinking process.
In STEM, students are NOT expected to have the perfect solution on their first attempt. They will likely never have a perfect solution. But by using the design thinking process, they can identify where they went wrong and move towards a better solution. Failure is expected in STEM. When engineers construct and test their prototypes, they identify problems and make adjustments and improvements to their designs. This is difficult for students to grasp until they experience it.
How do we teach our students to embrace the design thinking process?
So… how do we overcome this common problem and help our students embrace the design thinking process?
Here are some things that have worked for me:
- Emphasize the process over the product.
STEM is about problem solving, so as STEM teachers, our focus should be on helping students become better problem solvers. This means explicitly teaching strategies for solving problems, assessing students’ problem-solving skills, and giving specific feedback on their attempts at problem-solving. A design process rubric can be used to guide these activities and help you and your students focus on the problem-solving process.
- Practice the design thinking process with smaller STEM challenges.
Jumping into a big, weeks-long STEM project right off the bat is intimidating. Instead try to plan a few small, simple STEM challenges at the beginning of your course. It doesn’t feel as stressful when a prototype you’ve only been working on for 10 minutes fails. This will also give you an opportunity to see which of your students may struggle with fear of failure and allow you to do some coaching around perseverance. This leads me to tip #3.
- Talk about perseverance in STEM.
As a class, discuss what perseverance looks like and what it feels like. Call it out when you see students persevering in the classroom. Give students opportunities to shout one another out for persevering. Even students who take to STEM naturally will encounter a project that is challenging. It’s important to have everyone buy into the culture of perseverance.
- Model overcoming failure.
As STEM teachers, we are often learning new technology as we use it with our students. You will make mistakes, and that is OK. Use it as a teaching opportunity and show students how you go about solving the problem. As they say, “actions speak louder than words.”
- Don’t give answers, but scaffold as needed.
When students are really struggling, it’s easy to feel like you should just give them an answer. However, when we do this, our students miss out on this opportunity to practice perseverance and create their own solution. Instead, when students really need a push, you can guide them to identify points of failure and help them identify ways to improve their prototype by asking questions. “What happened when you did X? Why do you think Y happened? What does the project criteria say about Z?” In this way, you can guide their thinking and help them move forward in the process, but your students will still have ownership over their final design.
You are imparting life skills
One of the most challenging and best parts of being a STEM teacher is that you get to cultivate so many important life skills in your students. With intentional planning and lots of opportunities to practice, your students will learn to embrace failure and the design thinking process. Then you’ll be ready to tackle the big problems and watch your students flourish.
Trilby Hillenbrand from STEM in the Middle outlines 5 ways you can help your students embrace failure in the design thinking process.
Trilby Hillenbrand from STEM in the Middle is a full-time STEM educator with over a decade of classroom experience and a recent finalist for the Presidential Award of Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. As owner and author of STEM in the Middle, Trilby creates engaging and rigorous STEM resources for middle school teachers.
Connect with Trilby on Instagram or Facebook, and find out more about her work here.
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