Design and Technology education is a compulsory course in schools in many countries and it offers a methodological training in concepts of design and technology through practical application of real life problems and use of standardized design methods. Design in Indian schools is predominantly considered ‘visual’ and is learnt as a part of art education comprising of artistic skills and not acquiring skills such as problem-solving for creating value, divergent thinking, empathy, etc. The Design and Technology education acknowledges the difference between professional designers’ design thinking and aims and objectives of novice school children learning design (Anning et al. 1996). Unfortunately, and in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, a rigid, linear approach to designing still predominates in school’s design and technology education which is highly influenced by methods designed for adult design professionals. Current practitioners of collaborative design education follow certain distributed models for teaching design to children, but none of these models focus on organization of groups.The aim of this thesis is to design effective collaborative structures and guidelines for design task with instructions suitable for children in Indian middle (municipal) schools. The thesis tests the hypothesis whether group composition (when and how the groups are formed) effects idea generation of novice school children in a design problem-solving session. We tested four different collaborative conditions based on the composition of dyad groups, with students in the age group 11-14 and measured the effect of group organization on design output and communication. Game designing and group size of two were found to be the most promising conditions for collaboration resulting in flexibility of ideas. Two final design trials were conducted with the students in a longitudinal study where the second design trial served as a validation to the findings of the first design trial. We used a mixed method analysis to investigate differences in design output as well as design process. A ranking was generated based on the scores of these four factors. This was followed by a thorough communication analysis of the videos of groups solving the design problem. The four collaborative conditions were also evaluated on gender differences by comparing same gender groups with mixed gender groups. Differences were found in performance of children groups under different collaborative conditions. Insights on problem-solving strategies, group communication, attitudes of team members resulting in positive and negative social-interdependence are discussed in conclusions of the thesis.