Key points:
Love it or hate it, many teachers have seen how much technology has changed the landscape of education. Within this rapidly changing landscape, teachers have taken on a very different role from how we have been viewed historically. We are no longer guardians and transmitters of knowledge as we once were. Instead, technology has allowed students to have almost instant access to different types of information, tools, and more in today's age.
With infinite information at their fingertips, how do we equip these new types of learners with the skills to interpret, problem-solve, and think critically about the information they encounter when we are not always the ones delivering it to them? The answer is not necessarily new, but it is a concept that needs more attention from educators in our modern classrooms: design thinking.
What is design thinking?
The idea of design thinking has been around since the 1960s (Dam & Teo, 2022), but it has continued to change in both name and form over the past 60 years. At its core, design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that fosters empathy, innovation, and creativity within students in order to solve real-world problems. We should not see it simply as a tool that teachers can use, but as a necessity to prepare students for the complexities of the 21st century.
The basic steps of design thinking are empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing (Interaction Design Foundation, 2016). The goal is for students to lead with empathy to identify and define a problem and then develop a realistic solution to that problem that can be tested and refined through feedback. This process pushes students to engage with skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and problem solving. These skills are extremely important for successful functioning in both the workplace and daily life in the 21st century.
Impacts
Design thinking is imperative because of the 21st century skills it teaches students and asks them to practice, and it can also provide many additional positive impacts for students. Using design thinking can foster a healthy relationship with failure among students. Dorland's (2023) research shows that “design thinking training can enable students to embrace failure in their work rather than fight against it.” By pushing students to continue looking for ways to improve their work through feedback, the idea of failure is framed in a positive way.
Design thinking also has a positive impact on overall student motivation and engagement. Daniel (2016) found that in an entrepreneurship classroom, design thinking creates an atmosphere conducive to learning, in which students play an active role in gaining experience from their activities. Possibly the most direct benefit, design thinking supports overall academic achievement by developing critical thinking, teamwork skills, social awareness, and negotiation of meaning (Carroll et al, 2010, cited in Noel and Liu, 2016).
How do I use design thinking?
Design thinking is flexible enough to be used at various levels and contents. So how do we use it in our classrooms? To start, small steps are important. Looking for individual lessons or activities that can be modified to fit a design thinking or “problem-solving” perspective is the best place to start. For example, in my seventh grade geography class we completed a “Local Affairs” project at the beginning of the year using Google Earth. This is an independent design thinking task where students are tasked with learning about or discovering a need or problem within our local community by talking to family, friends, or other adults. They need to precisely define the problem, propose solutions, show their solution using Google Earth, and share their presentation with a local leader or community adult. After finding one or two lessons for using design thinking, the next step should be to create large projects at scale or look for entire units that can be changed to a design thinking framework.
Incorporating design thinking into classrooms is not just an educational trend, but a transformative change that we, as educators, must make to better align with today's students. It is certainly not without challenges such as time limitations or lack of resources, but the result is worth the effort. By promoting empathy, creativity, and critical thinking in our classrooms through design thinking, we prepare and send our students into an ever-changing world with the confidence to navigate it and become leaders of tomorrow. I highly encourage any teacher who wants to revamp their curriculum and classroom in an engaging and relevant way to start looking for ways to implement design thinking.
References
Dam, RF and Teo, YS (May 20, 2022). The history of design thinking. Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-get-a-quick-overview-of-the-history
Daniel, A. D. (2016). Foster an entrepreneurial mindset by using a design thinking approach in business education. Industry and higher education, 30(3), 215–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950422216653195
Dorland, A. M. (2023). Not learning: Design thinking and developing a positive mindset toward failure in the university classroom. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 14 (1). https://doi.org/10.22329/celt.v14i1.7155
Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF. (May 25, 2016). What is Design Thinking (DT)?. Interaction Design Foundation – IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking
Noel, L., and Liu, T. L. (2016). Use Design Thinking to create a new educational paradigm for primary school children to achieve greater student engagement and success. DRS Minutes, 2. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.200
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