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

Teacher Training: Anderson (2012) described how 
they added a design thinking cycle of emphasizing, 
ideating, prototyping and testing to the development of 
web quests in a teacher training program for enhancing 
project-based learning and authentic assessment. Harth 
and Panke (2018) applied design thinking as a conceptual 
framework and methodological approach for empowering 
the teaching agency of STEM students who are preparing 
for a career as vocational school teachers through a 
workshop on curriculum development, lesson planning 
and instructional techniques with engineering students. 
Their case study reflected the specific traits and challenges 
of vocational education in the German dual mode system. 
Based on survey results and content analysis of student 
papers, the authors documented central learning outcomes 
of the design thinking workshop: Perceiving students as 
individuals, perceiving oneself as a teaching professional, 
extending the instructional repertoire, recognizing the 
importance of learning environment factors such as 
innovative furniture, understanding threshold concepts, 
and experiencing the value of prototyping.
Medical Education: Gottlieb, Wagner, Wagner, and 
Chan (2017) discussed design thinking as complementing 
traditional curriculum planning approaches for medical 
education with the potential to “clearly and empathetically 
understand the needs and problems faced by their students 
or trainees” (Gottlieb et al., 2017, p. 24). While traditional 
needs assessments in medical education comprise 
approaches such as quantitative surveys of learner 
perceptions, this does not acknowledge the importance of 
the educator’s interpretation on the learners’ needs. The 
authors pointed to the redesign of a residency program’s 
academic schedule as a promising example. Badwan, 
Bothara, Latijnhouwers, Smithies, and Sandars (2018) 
illustrated the key features of design thinking in medical 
education by describing the activities at the #ElsevierHacks 
at the AMEE Conference 2017. Teams of medical students, 
software developers and designers engaged in design 
thinking with support by medical education, technical 
and marketing mentors to develop educational tools 
geared to enhancing medical education. In fall 2014, Grift 
and Kroeze (2016) developed a one-semester crossover 
course called “Hacking Healthcare” at the University 
of Amsterdam with the goal of fostering collaboration 
skills. McLaughlin at al. (2019) summarized 15 different 
case studies of design thinking in the public health sector 
(three of which involved students) and concluded that 
the articles analyzed converged on a set of benefits: “All 
highlighted the importance and benefit of collaboration,