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The paper discusses how a teaching approach, interdisciplinary design and
invention pedagogy, affected primary school student teachers’ learning outcomes through
the craft design process in pre-service teacher education. This study applies developmental
work research (Engestro¨m in J Educ Work 14(1):133–156, 2001; Engestro¨m in
Yhteiskehittely ja vaihdon vyo¨hykkeet tutkijoiden ja elinkeinoela¨ma¨n va¨lilla¨ 2013; Galison
in Image & logic: a material culture of microphysics. The University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 1997; Gorman in Trading zones, interactional expertise and interdisciplinary
collaboration 2005) that aims to develop educators’ work involved here. To support a craftdesigning
process and making innovative artefacts, two disciplines—natural science
(physics) and drama—as examples of interdisciplinarity were invited to contribute to the
craft process. The craft course on ‘smart textiles’ was carried out in the spring of 2014 and
2015 at the University of Helsinki in pre-service primary teacher education. The aim of the
crafts course was to get student teachers familiar with different dimensions of crafts
(textile, design and technology), inquiry-based designing and an interdisciplinary teaching
approach to be used in a primary school context. The craft task included working in small
groups and designing smart textiles. Student teachers documented their designing and
implementation processes through photos and videos using applications such as iMovie or
Movie maker. In addition, participants wrote comprehensions of their projects in learning
diaries. The data consist of student teachers’ learning diaries (N = 17) and prototypes
(N = 17), which are analysed by qualitative content analysis. As results, first, the paper
presents some innovative artefacts that student teachers created. Second, it describes the
learning that emerged in pedagogical thinking of student teachers related to theinterdisciplinary designing process, including (1) four interdisciplinary contexts, (2) new
pedagogic thinking and (3) change of attitude towards integrative teaching.