Developing Young Thinkers: An Exploratory Experimental Study Aimed to Investigate Design Thinking and Performance in Children

Abstract

: It is increasingly popular to teach creative thinking skills in schools. A diverse variety of programmes exist to support practitioners in this task, and some research has been gathered on the effectiveness of individual approaches. However, there is less research on the effect of such programmes in Indian schools and creative thinking. This study aimed to investigate the process of creative problem solving in children observes thinking strategies used by fifteen 11 to 13-year old children redesigning the traditional board game of Snakes and Ladders. There were three experimental conditions: individual, dyad and triad collaborative. The paper presents results where protocol analysis is used to investigate evolution of design ideas and various thinking strategies to analyze the levels of design thinking. The paper also examines the relationship between creative thinking and collaboration. Results demonstrated differences in levels of design thinking and performance gains for collaborative conditions both dyad and triad.