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

participatory design, bricolage/tinkering, serious play 
and making. Future work that focuses on the intersections 
of, for example, design thinking and making or design 
thinking and participatory design are promising avenues 
to gaining renewed inspiration and opening up additional 
educational opportunities. 
The themes we identified as meaningful in the 
educational context differ from previous work in business 
and organizational development. At the same time, there 
are notably a number of similar elements. On the one hand, 
design thinking is not context-neutral, on the other hand, 
there are significant overlaps between design thinking in 
education, business, and policy innovation. Powerful themes 
can emerge across domains. What sets design thinking in 
education apart from other contexts is the interplay between 

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Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges
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innovation approach and curriculum. While design thinking 
can be taught as a standalone subject, its appeal in an 
educational context stems from being a conduit for academic 
learning goals. As Carroll et al. (2010) stated: “Design thinking 
must be integrated into academic content. While it may stand 
alone, its power as a tool for learning comes in the ways it can 
support a diverse range of interdisciplinary academic content” 
(Carroll et al., 2010, p. 51).
This is not to say that design thinking should 
be taught in academic silos. As demonstrated by the 
success of Stanford d.school and Potsdam Hasso Plattner 
Institute, there is potential for multidisciplinary design 
thinking programs in education. With their model of 
the “educational design ladder” Wrigley and Straker 
(2017) developed a transferable concept that provides a 
process for the organization and structuring of units for a 
multidisciplinary curriculum.