Design thinking and the practicing teacher: addressing problems of practice in teacher education

Design thinking has been receiving increased scholarly and popular interest in education; yet, teachers are often uncertain about what it means to implement this in their educational settings. Design thinking, nonetheless, offers a framework to address the challenging problems of practice educators face. In this article, we examine a graduate-level teacher education course, at a Midwestern US university, which uses the Stanford Design Thinking Model. Educators in the course found that exposure to and practice of the design thinking model allowed them to creatively solve problems of practice relevant to their context. In particular, educators reported three main takeaways from the experience: (1) valuing empathy, (2) becoming open to uncertainty, and (3) seeing teaching as design. We discuss implications and challenges for scholarship and practice.