Pedagoogiline pidur kui määramatuse reguleerimise analüütiline mõiste spekulatiivse disaini õppes

Abstract

This Master’s thesis examines the role of teacher interventions in guiding students’ thinking in the context of speculative design education. The study addresses the problem that the openness and uncertainty characteristic of speculative learning may lead lower secondary students to cognitive dispersion, uncertainty, or difficulties in justifying their ideas. The contribution of the thesis lies in clarifying the concept of the “pedagogical brake” as a possible analytical tool for describing teacher interventions in learning situations marked by a high degree of uncertainty. The pedagogical brake is understood as a deliberate and timely teacher intervention whose purpose is not to restrict creativity, but to help students temporarily regain focus, clarify their ideas, and cope with uncertainty. The study followed a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach and was conducted in lower secondary technology education lessons. The analysed episodes suggest that, with limited teacher guidance, students’ thinking could move toward superficial fantasy, technological vagueness, or stagnation in discussion. In the empirical material, teacher interventions were most clearly expressed through two forms: framing, which temporarily delimited the field of meaning of the task, and anchoring, which connected students’ ideas to more concrete experiences, materials, mechanisms, or use situations. Ethical mediation is discussed as a possible third dimension in the theoretical framework, but it appeared less clearly in the empirical material. Based on the analysed episodes, the findings suggest that, in this context, uncertainty did not support learning by itself, but required situation-sensitive regulation by the teacher. Timely pedagogical braking could help restore the analytical focus of discussion and support students in justifying and making sense of their ideas more precisely.