Review Article Stefanie Panke* Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

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Open Education Studies, 2019; 1: 281–306
Review Article
Stefanie Panke*
Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, 
Opportunities and Challenges
https://doi.org/10.1515/edu-2019-0022
received March 13, 2019; accepted December 23, 2019.
Abstract: The article discusses design thinking as a 
process and mindset for collaboratively finding solutions 
for wicked problems in a variety of educational settings. 
Through a systematic literature review the article 
organizes case studies, reports, theoretical reflections, 
and other scholarly work to enhance our understanding of 
the purposes, contexts, benefits, limitations, affordances, 
constraints, effects and outcomes of design thinking in 
education. Specifically, the review pursues four questions: 
(1) What are the characteristics of design thinking that 
make it particularly fruitful for education? (2) How is 
design thinking applied in different educational settings? 
(3) What tools, techniques and methods are characteristic 
for design thinking? (4) What are the limitations or 
negative effects of design thinking? The goal of the article 
is to describe the current knowledge base to gain an 
improved understanding of the role of design thinking 
in education, to enhance research communication and 
discussion of best practice approaches and to chart 
immediate avenues for research and practice. 
Keywords: literature review; design thinking; higher 
education; k12; informal learning; participatory design; 
LSP; LEGO serious play; making; makerspaces; bricolage; 
tinkering; library; museum.
1 Introduction
Design thinking comprises a variety of creative strategies 
for stewarding projects with multiple stakeholders or 
fostering organizational innovation: “It helps deal with 
ambiguities and articulate the right questions, as well 
as identify and formulate possibilities and potentials” 
(Grots & Creuznacher, 2016, p. 191). As a problem-
solving approach that has been tried and tested with 
socially ambiguous problem settings, it deals with 
everyday-life problems, which are nonetheless difficult 
to solve – “wicked problems” (Rauth, Köppen, Jobst, & 
Meinel, 2010). Wicked problems have no right or wrong 
solution and resist traditional scientific and engineering 
approaches, as “the information needed to understand 
the problem depends upon one’s idea for solving it” (Rittel 
& Webber, 1973, p. 161). Wicked problems have a wide, 
unbound problem space and complexity, are open for 
interpretation, surrounded by competing or conflicting 
opinions for solutions, and unlikely to ever be completely 
solved (Hawryszkiewycz, Pradhan, & Agarwal, 2015).
Design thinking aims at transcending the immediate 
boundaries of the problem to ensure that the right 
questions are being addressed. The process foresees steps 
that allow participants to analyze, synthesize, diverge and 
generate insights from different domains through drawing, 
prototyping and storytelling (Brown, 2009). During 
the design thinking process, the facilitator encourages 
learners to see constraints as inspiration (Brown & Wyatt, 
2010). The results are typically not directed toward a 
technological “quick fix” but toward new integrations 
of signs, things, actions, and environments (Buchanan, 
1992). 
According to Renard (2014), the term design thinking 
has roots in various disciplines and is frequently, although 
not exclusively, associated with engineering, architecture 
and related design disciplines in early literature focused 
on design thinking. 
The essence of design thinking is to put participants 
into contexts that make them think and work like an 
expert designer, and thereby foster civic literacy, empathy, 
cultural awareness and risk taking (Sharples et al., 
2016). According to Skaggs (2018) the tools observation, 
experience, and inquiry allow designers to understand 
human needs and shape information to drive the creation 
of products and experiences that make human connections 
through aesthetics, need-finding, or making meaning. 
As awareness of the designed experience increases, so