Making Design Practices Visible to Young Learners

The role of design in K-12 education has increased in recent years. We argue that many of these design experiences do not help develop important habits of mind associated with Human Centered Design (HCD). In this paper, we present an approach for developing higher-order thinking processes associated with HCD as part of embedded design practice - an approach for teaching design thinking to younger children using principles of cognitive apprenticeship. First, we identify fundamental design habits of mind, discuss why it is difficult for young learners to develop such habits, and then draw upon cognitive apprenticeship principles to propose a concrete approach for design education. Finally, we present an illustration of embedded design practice to show how the situated context offers opportunities for designers to learn more about the needs of young learners while providing learners with opportunities to learn more about design practices.