Design thinking is a process for innovative problem-solving and it is valuable for a variety of fields. Throughout the next couple of weeks, I will be working on a Problem of Practice (PoP) that I chose from my professional context, education.
This is 1 of 5 posts that will focus on the stages of design thinking. The 5 modes shown on the left, highlight the stages of the Stanford d.school's Design Thinking model. Empathy is the foundational stage of human-centered design that focuses on understanding the user's needs by stepping into their life.
As an educator, I constantly try to create effective learning experiences to improve student comprehension and reduce any barriers to their learning. I have chosen a PoP and selected an empathy technique to practice the first mode of design thinking. Check out my report below.
Context:
My PoP evolved from the fact that the majority of the students I engage with within my professional context are English Language Learners and they struggle when they study core subjects such as Mathematics and Science in English. They face challenges to understand given tasks, which are theoretical and text-heavy as prescribed in the current science curriculum. The language barrier creates a significant disadvantage for them when studying science because they find it harder to read texts and do not fully understand what they are reading. As a consequence, it is quite common that teachers spend most of the actual class time focusing on language skills rather than retaining the purpose of the text itself. I have personally observed a positive correlation between students' English and science grades.
Methods:
For my PoP, I wanted to choose a suitable empathetic research method where I would not face any obstacles and gain valuable insights into the students' behavior. I used a combination of methods in my attempt to immerse myself in the students' perspective and understand their feelings towards the science content. Since I had access to schools, I decided the first thing I needed to do was to observe how students reacted to the material they were learning. I attended a 45-minute science class where students were starting a new topic. The main resource was their science textbook and they were required to listen to the instructor's explanation, read the text, and complete the questions at the end of the lesson. I recorded notes on my observations with regard to student behavior, responses, and engagement. Since I am a visual person I used the notes to create a student journey in order to analyze their behavior and try to find common trends. I tried to step into a student's shoes and imagine learning science in a second language to brainstorm the reasons why they behaved the way they did.
Findings:
Students asked about the meaning of several words which included scientific terms and new English terms. When they would ask about the meaning of a word they would try to pronounce it, but not continue the full term as they would find it too difficult. Others would just point at the word in their textbook. I also observed a lack of engagement that included daydreaming and doodling in empty spaces of their textbooks. I found it interesting that the majority of students searched for the bold terms within the text and only highlighted the sentences that included them. Whereas other students almost highlighted the full text. As I expected, when it came to solving the questions most students skipped the directions. Surprisingly some even skipped reading the question stems and only read the answer options. When I tried to make meaning of the students' learning experience, I realized that the majority resorted to rote memorization rather than attempting to understand the material. This was mainly due to the lack of comprehension skills needed to extract important information from the text.
Using my notes from the class observation, I organized my observations into a mind map and analyzed them to study the possible causes of the students' actions. I used different colors to label my observations into categories which included engagement levels, language barriers, or both.
Check out my color-coded visual map below.
Image Credits:
Shutterstock by pgvector