21세기가 요구하는 자율적이고 창의적인 인간을 육성하기 위해서, 아동의 창의성 개발을 위한 교육이 다른 어느 때 보다 강조되고 있다. 특히 전통적으로 다른 어느 과목보다 창의성이 중요시 되어왔던 디자인수업(Durling, Cross & Johnson, 1996;Fischer, 2004)은 이러한 맥락에서 좀 더 관심을 받고 있다. 예를 들어 2010년 서울시에서는 서울시 교육청과 공동으로 우리나라 최초의 초등학교 디자인교과서를 개발하였고, 초등학교 5～6학년을 대상으로 서울시 소재 초등학교에서 창의적 체험활동의 교재로 현재 사용되고 있다(손남신, 2009).
Recently creative personality education has been emphasized as an important factor in educating students as new leaders of the future society. This study in this context purposed to examine the educational effects in terms of improving creative personality of the students participated in this case study which was designed and implemented by a PBL(Problem-based learning) based design education class to 21 elementary students during 16 weeks (2hours a week) as an after-school program. The PBL based design education was an integrated teaching-learning approach combining the characteristics of ‘design education’ (practicality, design process, and self-directed learning process) and those of PBL (authentic task, problem-solving process, and collaborative learning environments). The results of this study were analyzed from the data collected from ‘Creative Personality Scale (CPS),’ ‘interviews,’ and ‘students’ outputs (works).’ and presented that over all, all the sub-categories of creativity and personality scales were improved, and especially, imagination and curiosity, the sub-categories of creativity, and self-confidence and eduratnce as the sub-categories of personality were distinctive. The study, after all, showed the potential of the PBL based design education program as an effective teaching-learning approach for improving creative personality of the students within broader and diverse environments of learning.