Fostering Design Thinking for High School Students Through an Automotive Engineering Project

Design thinking is a prospective approach to delivering integrated STEM's complex and creative aspects into regular curricula. The purpose of this exploratory case study is to evaluate the effectiveness of integrated STEM instruction based on the engineering design process (EDP) for high school students. It concentrated on engineering design as a crucial component of a challenge contained inside an automotive engineering context. A car prototype was used to generate design concepts that both addressed the technology content and added to the engineering aspect. The special interest of this study was the students' reactions and attitudes as they worked in teams to develop, test, and remodel a mousetrap car. The research was administered to twenty-eight private high-school students of Yogyakarta, Indonesia that were grouped into seven teams of 3 to 4 students. Direct group observation during the learning process is used to evaluate each design thinking criterion, and video documentation was employed to provide a more in-depth analysis. The observations performed on each student group in each stage of the EDP covered six aspects of design thinking skills: responses to the design challenge, communication, leadership, teamwork, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Further, semi-structured interviews were performed to confirm the observation findings. A descriptive analysis was performed to examine observed groups' design thinking attitudes and the corresponding proficiency level. The codes were generated to describe the various performance levels in each design thinking criterion. This study revealed varying performances among student groups during engineering design-based activities. It was discovered that student groups with strong design thinking performance displayed positive interpersonal relationships among group members. Due to their effective teamwork and communication, they are able to work successfully together in solving problems. Another intriguing finding was the difference in conceptual understanding between the genders, with male students comprehending topics more experientially and female students more theoretically. This study presents an analysis of the design thinking process for high school students as a reference in the implementation of integrated STEM learning based on the engineering design process, both in formal and informal learning. This study is intended to give recommendations for educators who are interested in providing instruction that will better prepare students for the skills of the twenty-first century.