Design thinking in education: a critical review of literature

Abstract

Design Thinking is an innovative, creative and human-centered process and mindset that employs collaborative multidisciplinary teams in order to generate user- focused products, services or experiences. It has been applied beyond the original sphere of design work to business, engineering, technology, and more recently, education, because of its ability of advancing creativity and innovation by applying an empathetic, flexible and iterative approach. With the quest for a teaching strategy for 21st century skills, work habits and character traits, there has been, in the past five years, keen and wide interest towards Design Thinking as applied in education. This paper therefore provides a systematic, comprehensive and analytical strategy in mapping out and offering a critical review and analysis of over 68 journal articles, books and reports on design thinking in education. Overall, this paper recognizes the gains that can be made from utilizing Design Thinking in education especially in the global quest of teaching 21st century skills. This paper also suggests a need to pursue further studies on the development of a Design Thinking framework for teaching, learning, curriculum design & teacher training.