The relation between academic achievement and the spontaneous use of design-thinking strategies

Design-thinking strategies are believed to enhance performance and learning, but it is unclear whether these strategies have any relation to the types of learning measured by tests of academic achievement. This study examines the relations between students' prior academic achievement, their choices to use design-thinking strategies of seeking critical feedback and revising their work, and their learning during a 10-15-min on-line activity. Sixth-grade students designed three digital posters. After each poster, they had chances to seek either critical or confirmatory feedback, followed by a chance to revise the poster or not. Results show that prior academic achievement is positively related to students' spontaneous use of critical feedback-seeking. Critical feedback-seeking is positively associated with students' performance on the poster design task through revising, regardless of prior academic achievement. Thus, prior academic achievement indirectly predicts performance, first through critical feedback-seeking and then through revising. One possible interpretation is that students who exhibit higher academic achievement attained those levels because they had spontaneously employed these strategies during their academic studies. To test this claim, future work needs to determine if instruction in design-thinking strategies increases student academic achievement.