CATEGORÍAS ENCUADRADAS EN ESTE GRUPO

As the theory surrounding design suggests, studies that examine design and design thinking come from a wide array of different disciplines and locations. Those that look at young people as designers have often been found in STEM education fields (e.g., Baytak & Land, 2011; Lee, Kafai, Vasudevan, & Davis, 2014; Welch, 1999; Wilson, Smith, & Householder, 2014), art education (e.g., Zande, Warnock, Nikoomanesh, & Dexter, 2014; Watson, 2015), early childhood education (e.g., Davies, 1996; Hope, 2007, 2008; Milne, 2012), out-of-school literacy practices (e.g., Black, 2007; Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003; Mavers, 2007), as well as in school and after school literacy programs (e.g., Mills, 2007; Norris, 2014; Ranker, 2007, 2009, 2014; Shanahan, 2013; Simon, 2009). These studies have tended to examine specific projects or interventions or follow individual students’ design processes.

Welch (1999) noted that the “hidden” work of design made it hard to study; however, in an attempt to better understand how educators might teach design, he developed a method to examine the strategies that designers/students used. With five pairs of seventh grade students as his participants, Welch provided each pair with the same “design brief” that detailed the requirements for building a tower made of paper. Welch audio and video recorded the students’ work, and then, within three days, invited the students back for a retrospective interview where they watched the video with the researcher and commented on what they were doing. Using transcripts, accompanied by short descriptions of the students’ actions, Welch then coded the data and developed a basic map of each pair’s design process. Based on his analysis, the researcher determined that the students’ processes were much more complex than any linear model might accurately describe. He also noted that these students did not brainstorm lots of

possibilities beforehand, but instead preferred to begin modeling three-dimensionally and moved on to a new idea or model after an attempt failed. The “evaluation” phase that many scholars theorized as a final step in the design process did not appear to be a separate phase for these designers, but instead was an integrated and ongoing way of thinking throughout the process. Welch argued that these findings suggested “a need for

teachers to explicitly teach design process skills which will assist students’ problem- solving, but which do not impose a strict sequence in which those skills are applied” (p. 32).

In another STEM education study, this time drawing on case study methodology, Baytak and Land (2011) looked at a small group of fifth-graders in a science and

technology course. Students in this course were participating in a “learning-by-game design experience” (p. 768) in which they were asked to use Scratch, a free visual programming language often used as an entry to programming and software design (Resnick, 2009), to design a video game about an environmental science topic. Based on their analysis of data collected—including archived drafts of the students’ games, pre- and post-interviews with students, field notes and observations, video recordings of students working on games, and students’ logged daily design plans—the researchers reported that “the process of designing and testing led to continual redesign” and that both students and the teachers in the space were regarded as peers with whom to share “ideas, concepts, and strategies” (Baytak & Land, 2011, p. 779). The design environment promoted individual agency and collaboration rather than positioning the teacher as expert. This study also confirmed findings from previous studies, like Welch (1999), which viewed student design processes as including some common strategies and trends but no set, linear path.

Young people as designers of texts

As previously noted, there are also several examples of studies that have examined young people as designers of text both in and outside of school. Chandler- Olcott and Mahar (2003), for example, drew on the New London Group’s conception of design as a component of their analysis of two early adolescent girls’ use of digital technology. Using field notes from formal and informal interviews, a technology-focused student discussion group, and home visits as well as artifacts of their digital technology use, Chandler-Olcott and Mahar reported on the anime-based fanfiction site that one participant, Rhiannon, created. Rhiannon clearly drew from multiple sources and modes

to design hybrid texts that were “neither purely derivative nor individually constructed” but instead “represented a blend of social and personal perspectives” (p. 372). The other participant, Eileen, appropriated imagery from other sources, including traditional literature and action figures, and redesigned them, “anime-fying” them in her own

original artwork. Both girls’ participation was highly social, embedded in dynamic online communities, and both girls’ individual purposes and motivations drove their design processes. The researchers’ findings suggest that young people often engage in sophisticated design processes outside of school, finding mentorship instead in online communities.

Chandler-Olcott and Mahar (2003) also offered implications for how their findings may be relevant in school. They submitted that introducing more opportunities for students to participate in digital design processes in school may be motivating for students and teachers and students may benefit from positioning those who are already engaging in these outside-school design experiences as experts in the classroom. Subsequent studies have looked at classroom projects that involve more digital

technologies (e.g., Kitson, Fletcher, & Kearney, 2007; Mills, 2007; Mills & Exley, 2014; Shanahan, 2013). Findings from these studies included the limitations of relying on teachers’ knowledge of the multimodal affordances of digital technology (Kitson et al., 2007; Shanahan, 2013), concerns about power within and access to digital tools and processes (Mills, 2007), and tensions between using digital composing in the classroom and school standards and high-stakes testing (Mills & Exley, 2014).

Other researchers have looked at how students design texts in print-focused, low- technology environments (e.g., Ranker, 2007, 2009, 2014; Rowsell & Decoste, 2012; Skerrett & Bomer, 2013). Ranker (2007) drew on case study methods to study the complex composing processes of John, an eight-year-old student. He used “available design” as a unit of analysis to isolate design resources, including “characters, themes, motifs, images, layout conventions, story grammars, and other isolatable ideas that John drew from various media and their conventions” (p. 413). These other media included videogames, websites, television shows, and comic books. The student in this study was

not merely copying and pasting from different sources, however; Ranker described the student’s process as “one of redesigning rather than replicating" (p. 427) elements from multimodal literacy experiences outside of school.

In another of his studies, Ranker (2009a) again used case study methods to examine the collaborative writing practices of three first-grade students in a writing workshop classroom. Ranker collected audio and video recordings of the students composing and the teacher’s writing instruction, observational field notes, audio

recordings of informal conversations with the students and the teacher, and photocopies of the students’ written pieces. Drawing on semiotics as a lens for his analysis, Ranker isolated resources the three students used in composing a jointly-constructed text. The three students imported and transformed different multimodal composing processes. These included “(1) the practice of physically/spatially dividing their work into discrete parts (using separate papers and a numbering system) that each was responsible for developing; (2) the practice of producing elaborate drawings of cars; and (3) the practice of using published books as a source for written meanings and images” (p. 341). The students, as active designers of text, took up these different composing strategies in ways that met their own purposes and needs.

Looking across these design there were several important implications for this study. First, the research has provided evidence that students are capable of sophisticated design thinking and processes across disciplines and locations. Young people—whether in school or out of school, whether using new digital technologies or more traditional print-based tools—take active roles in making decisions and importing multiple semiotic resources to redesign texts. However, there is still much to learn about how these

processes work across writing contexts and how teachers’ instruction can support students in developing designerly ways of thinking and doing inside of schools. The literature on young people as designers also has also suggested that because of the complex, recursive, and variable processes that designers engage in, researchers

order to understand them. These implications have guided the design and analysis of this dissertation study.