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

Interdisciplinary: Aflatoony, Wakkary, and 
Neustaedter (2018) facilitated a design thinking course 
for 39 students from grades nine and ten, aged 15-16. Their 
evaluation focused on increased skills in problem solving, 
human-centredness and collaboration. Their findings 
indicate that while students varied in their engagement 
with activities skills’ enhancements, all participants 
improved to a certain degree: “students clearly showed that 
their focus shifted towards people, people’s interactions and 
people’s activities” (Aflatoony, Wakkary, & Neustaedter, 
2018, p. 452).
Perspectives of Teachers: Several publications 
reflect upon the roles and perspectives of teachers during 

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design thinking. Retna (2016) conducted a qualitative case 
study research in a school using teacher narratives. Data 
includes in-depth face-to-face interviews and participant 
observation. The findings show that teachers perceive 
that design thinking holds the potential for enhancing 
skills such as creativity, problem solving, communication 
and team work as well as empower students to develop 
empathy for others within and beyond the community. 
Carroll et al. (2010) observed: “It is essential to have 
teachers see the value of design thinking in their 
classrooms, and the connection between design and the 
academic goals of the classroom needed to be obvious to 
them” (Carroll et al., 2010, p. 50). Similarly, Kwek (2011) 
conducted a qualitative case study at a US public middle 
school partnering with the Stanford d.school to explore 
the factors that influenced the way design thinking is used 
in classroom and how it intersects with academic content. 
Through interviews with school leaders and classroom 
observations, the study found that mastery of academic 
core content still drives how design thinking is used to 
intersect with classroom learning.