Stimulating Pupils' Design Thinking in CDT

Abstract

Ever since Plato divided the population into 'thinkers' and 'doers', and then favoured the thinkers, the doers have come off badly in terms of status within the educational world. The scholar has always been portrayed as the 'head in the clouds' intellectual, living a cloistered life and studying in a monastic way. Academics are seen as those who have a profound knowledge of a specific subject, gained by extensive reading and study.

For some unfortunate reason the doer seems excluded from the higher order of human endeavour. Yet surely, Leonardo Da Vinci, Brunei, Edison and the Wright Brothers were all 'thinkers and doers'; they were of course, also designers, craftsmen and technologists - is not this the model we should set for ourselves?