Social designing is a method of public education for schoolchildren and students. Its main didactic meaning is the creation of such conditions in which students can find themselves living in society. The technology of social design allows students to go through the main stages of socialization, learn to interact in society with adults. She helps them shape their worldview, their vision.
Social designing is an activity that has social significance, produces an effect in society. Its end result for students should be the creation of something (not necessarily material) that is completely new to them and has practical application. This activity should be fully conceived, developed and carried out by the pupils themselves. In the course of its implementation, they come into interaction with the culture of adults, their world, and through this contact their behavior skills in society are formed.
Of course, social designing is not the only activity of modern youth. It is intertwined with many other types and is impossible without interpersonal communication.
Social designing is one of the ways to express ideas on the issue of changing the world and the environment around us by setting specific tasks, goals, and actions. It also describes the resources that must be attracted for the implementation of plans, and indicates the timing for their implementation.
Changes that are proposed to be carried out in the immediate environment can be provided in the form of:
1) the descriptions in words of the necessary actions that must be carried out in order to make changes;
2) the calculations necessary for the implementation of plans;
3) graphs, charts, drawings, etc.
At the present stage, educational institutions implement the following types of social projects of their pupils:
- informational (students work with data on any issue, analyze them, summarize, and then provide them to the entire audience);
- applied (application of the result of work on the project in practice);
- research (students must, passing through the stages characteristic of a real scientific study, investigate some kind of creative task, the solution of which is obviously unknown);
- playing, role-playing (pupils try on specific social roles in accordance with the content of the project and lose them);
- projects consisting of a combination of several techniques (creative, search, etc.).
Social design, like any educational technology, pursues certain goals and fulfills its tasks. The objectives of its holding are:
1) in involving students in activities to solve a problem in practice on their own;
2) in drawing their attention to the problems relevant in society.
Challenges facing social design:
1) the formation of skills of competent behavior in society;
2) improving the skills and abilities useful in society (making calculations of the necessary resources, planning future activities, preliminary analysis of the necessary results and possible outcomes) in practice;
3) consolidation of the ability to work in a team.
In project activities, the distribution of responsibilities between team members is very important. After all, it is clear that one person, while developing plans, conducting negotiations and polls, searching for sponsors, is not able to carry out all the work, especially with high quality. For this, there is also a division of labor in project activities, when each participant is given a lesson according to his abilities and the strength of his capabilities.
Work on such a project is important for all students, as it helps them to feel their importance in society, to recognize new opportunities, to increase their status in their educational institution.