From Story to Product: Pre-schoolers’ Designing and Making Processes in a Holistic Craft Context

Abstract

Early childhood education and care, pre-primary education, and basic education form an integrated whole that seeks to progressively facilitate a child’s development in Finland. In pre-primary education children are understood as active problem-solvers who learn in a holistic way through imagination and play. The term ´child´ is used to refer to a pupil or a student in early childhood- and pre-primary education. In the Finnish education system, the teaching of craft should strive towards a holistic craft process already from the first grade, though this process is rarely employed in pre-primary education. This article details an experiment in which 10 pre-schoolers designed and made an artifact in the context of a holistic craft. This experiment was intended to immerse the children in all phases of the designing, making, and assessment process. This process began with collecting anticipatory stories by storycrafting method. Following this, the pre-schoolers were asked to design and make a puppet-like character using textile materials. Qualitative content analysis was carried out on the children’s brainstorming and designing processes to find out the ways in which pre-schoolers make
connections between the various stages of a holistic design process. During the children’s work processes, their awareness of the holistic process was recognized. The experiment showed the pre-schoolers’ designing processes to proceed logically, and that they were able to design individual crafts in the context of a holistic craft process.