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

4.2 R2: How is design thinking applied in 
different educational settings?
After exploring why educators might want to use design 
thinking, this section delineates how it translates into 
educational practice. How is design thinking applied in 
different educational settings? Educational use cases 
are manifold: Design thinking techniques have been 
applied by researchers, teachers, instructional designers, 
librarians, makers, developers and administrators 

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Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
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with various subject matter backgrounds and interests. 
The areas of application for design thinking span K12, 
higher education, informal learning and post-graduate 
professional development. 
4.2.1 K12
The majority of design thinking projects in K12 focus on 
STEM and STEAM education. The sample also included two 
case studies in geography. Other areas of application are 
educational leadership, counseling and the development 
of tools and services. Several articles focused on the role, 
perspectives and experiences of teachers. 
Innovation in Leadership, Counseling and 
Diversity: In a theoretical reflection Gallagher and 
Thordarson (2018) stressed the potential of design thinking 
for school leadership development, school-wide projects, 
and initiatives. As an example, Fouché and Crowley (2017) 
described a school-wide “Innovation Lab” for grades 
K-4 that engaged students in design thinking activities 
as a problem-solving approach. Other projects seek to 
impact the school-wide mission through metacognitive 
awareness and transition support: Yeager et al. (2016) 
used design thinking as a methodology for redesigning 
and tailoring initial interventions for shifting from fixed 
to growth mindsets during the transition to high school. 
Fabri, Andrews and Pukki (2016) used design thinking 
to engage autistic students in participatory design of an 
online toolkit that offered support for their transition 
into higher education. Similarly, Suzianti and Atthousi 
(2019) co-developed a game-based learning environment 
for hearing-impaired elementary students with design 
thinking techniques to increase user participation.