Digital design literacy in K-9 education: Experiences from pioneer teachers

Abstract

Based on a comprehensive account of digital design literacy, we report from an interview study with pioneer teachers to disclose their experiences from teaching design in formal K-9 education. Unique for the study is that the interviewees were highly qualified K-9 teachers with research-based in-service training in design and more than three years of teaching experience in the area. Our findings suggest that digital design literacy supports children's agency and empowerment in relation to digital technology. Moreover, digital design literacy provides children with four broad competence areas of effective teamwork, contextual inquiry, imagination and creation, and design process navigation. Our study also demonstrates that digital design literacy does not fit seamlessly within the path of conventional school courses. Several structural barriers in formal education such as summative assessments, teacher-roles, failure-prevention and children's lack of experiences with open-ended assignments are reported and discussed in relation to previous studies in child-computer interaction research.