Teachers’ Perspectives on Facilitating Design Talks with Young Learners
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: With intentional teacher facilitation, whole-class conversations can help students refine their engineering reasoning, consider new ideas, and make novel connections between different ways of defining or solving a problem. These conversations can also help students expand their engineering thinking to include perspectives of care and socioethical deliberations. A team of classroom teachers and university researchers has been enacting and studying whole-class engineering design conversations—Design Talks—in first through sixth grade classrooms. We organize Design Talks in five genres: problem-scoping talks, idea generation talks, design-in- progress talks, design synthesis talks, and impact talks. After five years of planning, implementing, and analyzing recorded classroom talks together, we conducted this qualitative study to learn about teachers’ perceptions of their experiences with Design Talks. Specifically, we ask how elementary teachers perceive the benefits of intentionally facilitated whole-class conversations during engineering design units. We found four key themes that characterize the six teachers’ reflections. First, teachers see that Design Talks facilitate students’ learning to listen, empathize, and communicate, a cross-curricular goal. Second, teachers see Design Talks as a mechanism for asset-based pedagogy in engineering. Third, teachers value how Design Talks provide opportunities for students to take a perspective of care in engineering design, helping students reflect on what concerns and whose concerns should be prioritized in engineering design problems. Fourth, teachers point out how Design Talks help students synthesize designs and their underlying concepts. These themes highlight the benefits of Design Talks from teachers’ perspectives, showing how they see these structured conversations supporting multiple goals for students’ learning and development.
Institutions: Tufts University, Vanderbilt University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7128694398
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