Design Thinking in Education

 

What is Design Thinking?  Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving.

According to Ideou.com, design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they're creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. When you sit down to create a solution for a business need, the first question should always be what's the human need behind it?

Stanford University is well-known for creativity and innovation. They have developed a Design Thinking Process that has been used to channel creativity to solve complex business problems. 

The process involves a series of steps, designed to remove biases and preconceptions, and create an environment ripe for innovation and creativity, then bring in some inspiration from the engineering world that is known for prototyping, testing and improving. Those steps are:  EMPATHIZE, DEFINE, IDEATE, PROTOTYPE, and TEST.

I wonder if there is a way to apply design-thinking concepts to education.  I started to look online, and yes, of course someone has already thought of this!  This presentation by students at Stanford do a great job of applying these concepts to K-12 education.

There could certainly be value for using this process as a tool, with a number of applications:

(1) professional development with teachers  

(2) development and adaptation of curriculum with design 

(3) development of assessments for research, evaluation and classroom use 

 

 Sources

 What is Design Thinking?  From: https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/what-is-design-thinking

 What is Design Thinking?  From: http://www.theagileelephant.com/what-is-design-thinking/

 Taking Design Thinking to Schools.  Web Presentation.  From: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUSE/taking-design/presentations/Taking-design-to-school.pdf