Design Thinking in K-12 Education: A Global Review of Pedagogical Models and Student Outcomes, Ages 3–18

This paper synthesizes six meta-analyses and systematic reviews of design thinking (DT) in K-12 education worldwide, then extends that evidence base with a detailed single-institution case: Blue Blocks Montessori School and its research arm in Hyderabad, India. Where most of the literature evaluates DT through bounded classroom interventions and standardized creativity or achievement scales, the Blue Blocks case follows a continuous, developmentally embedded model spanning ages 3 to 16, culminating in a student-engineered CubeSat payload that received formal authorization from India's national space regulator and flew on an ISRO launch vehicle. The paper is careful to keep this observational case analytically separate from the pooled experimental literature, using it as an illustrative complement rather than a directly comparable data point, and closes by identifying where the field's methodological gaps (age-band coverage, inconsistent DT models, short interventions, lack of longitudinal pre-registration) intersect with what a longer-running, real-world program like Blue Blocks' might eventually help address.