Design Into Life: Why Apply Design to the Elementary Education

This paper tries to illustrate the relevance of design for public education and evaluates its prospects and applicability in the context of German elementary education. German education is subject to intensive debates. The model it is based on (industrialism and academicism) does no longer answer the needs of current and future societies. Design, as an approach, has the potential to re-imagine education to better suit those needs and to link it to questions and challenges of daily life. The research for this paper was developed by reviewing literature, observations in elementary schools, interviews with teachers and collecting international cases of design application in public education. This work reports some of the observed problems and chances in elementary education in Germany, lists intrinsic design characteristics and the possible impacts they could have on general education and, upon reflection of these findings, proposes a method of how and a rationale for why design could be used as a pedagogic strategy.