Empowering Students to Design the Change They Want to See in the World

On October 29, 2012, the skies over New York City erupted with lightning and windy rain as Hurricane Sandy brought a storm surge flooding coastal homes, subway tunnels, and roadways, and downing hundreds of trees. A striking aspect of the recovery efforts was how tragedy was reframed as an opportunity to innovate. In Prospect Park, Brooklyn, hundreds of downed trees were repurposed into a magical play space for the city's children called Zucker Natural Exploration Area. Here, children can craft raw materials into designs inspired by their own imaginations and take risks without fear of retribution. Seeing children at play in such innovative spaces prompts educators to consider: How can we infuse more of this type of engagement into each school day?

Design Thinking Empowers Learners

The answer to empowering our learners by giving them purpose and inspiring their passion may be right under our noses. In play, one group of children may use dozens of LEGO pieces to recreate the excavator they found fascinating on their neighborhood walk, while another group of students uses Minecraft to create a fireworks display in honor of the Chinese New Year.

Taken together, students learn the science and engineering behind simple machines or the importance of cultural practices in social studies, while learning how to collaborate with others and create something better together. In each instance, students use elements of design thinking to cocreate and problem solve, engaging in thoughtful dialogue and continuous iteration. This play can be made into so much more if educators guide students by demonstrating the utility of the content they're learning and inviting students into the process of meaning making.

Artful educators in design thinking classrooms work as a guide-on-the-side, empowering students to understand content through multiple perspectives and perhaps develop a sense of empathy. Why is there a need for that excavator truck (more housing to accommodate a growing population) or why are there fireworks during the Chinese New Year (ward off evil spirits)?

As students learn to identify ways content solves problems in the world, they can then research opportunities to apply that understanding in practice. For the excavators, this means identifying the potential use for simple machines to aid in demolition, digging, and construction, whereas for the fireworks it means identifying different ways to honor traditions, symbols, and important rituals in their community.

As students see opportunities to apply learning to the world around them, they communicate and invite multiple voices and together work to ideate possible ways to design a solution for a problem they see in the community or the world-at-large. Together, students take their understanding of the content and apply it to a novel solution through a prototype that they then test to determine how well their solution worked.

These prototypes are not always concrete tools based on simple machines like the excavator. They can take the shape of compelling opinion articles shared with a local paper or proposals to local school board policy, to name a few. Throughout the design process, students are continuously reflecting on their thinking, becoming more self-regulated by planning, monitoring, and assessing their growing knowledge, and revising their beliefs as they receive feedback and their understanding grows.

For example, consider how students might revise a plan or design when they receive a response from the school board about their proposal to add Chinese New Year to the school calendar or receive upcycled materials to create an excavator to build a community garden. Design thinking in practice moves learners beyond rote experiences and empowers students to see themselves as active contributors to the world today.

Empowering "Solutionaries"

When we're in the midst of a storm we can only watch and wait for it to pass before beginning to rebuild. But if we're smart, we can be proactive and begin seeking solutions before the next storm hits or the next wildfire is ignited. Empowered to be "solutionaries" instead of receptacles of rote worksheets, children greet the freedom to co-create with impressive learning and growth.

Driven by our students' curiosity and supported by expert educators, we can use the model of design thinking to help students design the change they want to be in the world.

Read more here: http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol15/num14/empowering-students-to-design-the-change-they-want-to-see-in-the-world.aspx

When this pandemic passes, what story will we tell as educators and as citizens of the world?

It’s just after lunchtime on the first day of our #coronapocalypse quarantine, and my phone has been ringing off the hook. Parents, colleagues and friends are understandably concerned. Everyone is seeking advice from their resident cognitive scientist, former classroom teacher and current associate teaching professor on how to continue to learn online during this crisis. And while the emergence of tech tools has ushered in new ways of learning, I wonder: Whom have these tools left out along the way?

With access to a laptop and broadband, students can experience spectacular events in history and visit locations across the universe with the flick of a finger. Free tools like Nearpod and Flipgrid provide creative opportunities for sharing information and connecting learners. So in preparation for this crisis, my partner and I sat with our children, ages 11 and 9, to discuss the coronavirus pandemic and co-create what learning would look like over the next month.

In just one morning, they flew through nearly a quarter semester of math thanks to Khan Academy’s free tools (and nifty day planner). In a matter of 45 minutes, they’d completed several units using ratios, rates and percentages to create a visual story about how closing schools mitigates the spread of the virus. Using the free design tools from Canva, my children created an infographic to share data about rates of infection.

On deck: learning to identify accurate information and visually communicate science-based data on the virus’s spread; gaining familiarity with the art and act of storytelling by sharing their own experiences and practicing taking the perspective of another; and designing a visual history of our world through the lens of both science and history.

Because of this pre-planning, I was able attend regular meetings from the comfort and safety of my home — a privilege. We’ve had to check in on our kids to provide support, redirect their activities and even break up a few arguments. But most of my check-ins involve watching in awe at the remarkable learning that’s unfolding. Yet I know my children are not magic. They are simply privileged to be able to access tools and support that will help them learn while their school is closed.

Where is equity in learning when only privileged children have access to resources, tools, space and materials for co-creating knowledge? And what assumptions are we making when we assume that this is the type of learning every child needs?

More than 2 million students lack access to the broadband necessary to access most content while in school. Access from home is even more inequitable, with less than two-thirds of rural Americans having broadband and only 54 percent of those whose income is less than $30,000 a year having access to a computer. How useful is expertly curated content if only the haves can get it?

This only exacerbates the inequity of learning when education goes online. It makes visible the systemic issues we have as a country when more than one-third of Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless. And what about the nearly 7 million students whose services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are being disrupted? It is still unclear how these students will safely receive their needed special education services, and how learners who rely on school-based social workers to process issues from abuse to bullying will get the social and emotional support they require to survive.

Learning is not solely a cognitive endeavor. A student cannot learn when depressed, afraid or hungry. Where is the equity in access to food without stigma during this crisis?

In the midst of this current crisis, droves of incredible humans have come forward to share their talents with an increasingly isolated world. The Cincinnati Zoo has started streaming a Home Safari Facebook Live, starting with its darling hippo Fiona. And while the Kennedy Center is closed, children’s author Mo Willems is hosting a virtual Lunch Doodles series to keep young learners engaged during these strange times.

When this pandemic passes, what story will we tell as educators and as citizens of the world? How will we have served children who lack access to resources or whose parents have lost their jobs — or, worse, their home — as a result of this crisis?

How will we create more equitable systems for our children to access food, medical support and a free and appropriate public education during the next crisis? And how will we prepare our learners to become advocates for their own needs once they are no longer part of our compulsory education system?

This time of crisis highlights the fragility of our systems of education, health care and financial mobility. It can also be an opportunity to advocate for social services that should be a right for all humans.

Read more here: https://www.the74million.org/article/a-moms-view-my-well-resourced-family-is-managing-online-learning-for-my-kids-just-fine-sadly-not-all-parents-have-those-advantages/

Three Tools for learning during uncertain times

Hello friends.

Several of our family, friends, and colleagues have asked for us to share tools we created for our kiddos to keep our children learning during this time. These templates and tools have been well received so I wanted to publicly share them in the event that they are helpful to you as well. However, I have a few very strong caveats to ‘learning’ during these interesting times:

1. There are tremendous issues of inequity inherent in these times around access to technology, services, and supports to name just a few.

2. While there are three flexible templates at the bottom, I do not believe these are one size fits all templates. 

3. Nor do I think these are tools that are perfect for everyone. So if you don’t like them, don’t use them. No worries and frankly you’re in good company!

4. I want to acknowledge my tremendous privilege in being able to support my kids during this time when many others are still heading to work. 

5. And I want to give thanks to those  folks bravely running TOWARDS the unknown: our healthcare workers and first responders.  

You can skip to the bottom for the three templates** but below are six essential understandings that should be foundational to any learning, especially now: connections, clarity, curation, support, feedback, and flexibility:

1. CONNECTIONS: 

As with anything in life, connections are essential before any real ‘work’ can begin. Hearts before heads, right (Portnoy, 2019)? 

I’ve seen lots of teachers take photos of worksheets with their cell phones and email pictures as attachments to parents as the day’s ‘work’. To this I say: WE MUST DO BETTER. 

While not everyone is as technologically savvy, I’d like to suggest we work harder to do more to connect with our kids (as teachers and parents) before shoving another worksheet down their throat. We’ll deal with the worksheet comment in a moment. First, some pointers for connecting.

Even when learning virtually, connections can happen in meaningful ways both synchronously (in real time) and asynchronously (at different times) if done well. What does it mean to do it well? You’ll see that below in CLARITY & CURATION. 

Many schools are navigating issues of student privacy and have shied away from connecting online. There’s not a single perfect answer, but if your district allows it, here are some ways to CONNECT MEANINGFULLY both synchronously and asynchronously:

Synchronous: Gather together to connect in real time, ask questions, and just BE together:

• Google Hangout

• Zoom

• BlueJeans

Asynchronous: 

• FlipGrid: post a question and all your students can respond in their own time. Give them a due date (e.g., 3 p.m. today) and then ask that they respond to three of their peers by 3 p.m. tomorrow. Everyone has a face and a voice. It’s a beautiful thing.

• SeeSaw: Students can safely share content with peers, teachers, and parents in an all in one platform that is super easy to use. 

  2. CLARITY 

Funny how at work we are most frustrated when goals keep flip flopping and expectations keep getting changed. Kids are no different. All of us thrive when we have clarity of expectations. This means that while learning remotely you may need to take a step back and reconsider what is really important, and what is really expected.

My children have been receiving school work from their teachers for a few days now. Some teachers are doing a stellar job of creating meaningful learning experiences. But overall we’re finding that clarity of goals is best as a SHARED agreement.

For clarity you should consider together: 

• What assignments are most important? Why?

• What does each assignment really teach? Is there a different/better way of doing it?

• How long should your kids work on these assignments?

• How will these assignments benefit your child in the future?

Clear expectations are key.

3. CURATION 

You’ll notice that within this note as well as in each of the three templates there are handy links to the sites/sources where my kids will find relevant information. 

In the daily schedule you’ll see that I have a general link to a few places on Khan Academy. In each of my kiddo’s schedules those links go DIRECTLY to the place where THEY need to begin.

Don’t know how to add links, no problem. Follow this link to learn how to add links to all your kids learning tools.

Trust me when I tell you that embedding links to their daily schedules will lessen their opportunity to mindlessly scroll through “the Google” (altogether: OK Boomer). 

Or if you’re my youngest son it will remove the excuse for watching hours of youtubers. There’s plenty of time for that too.

TL;DR: Curate content before setting your learners loose!

As you and your kids become more comfortable with homeschooling and your kids are ready to become more autonomous in their learning, please consider engaging them in DESIGN SPRINTS to APPLY their knowledge by DESIGNING solutions. More on that in an upcoming post although you can get started here, here, and here.

The best scenario is that your children or students are engaged in co-creating knowledge. And what an incredible opportunity to invite your kids to see how to identify CREDIBLE sources. This is the ultimate teachable moment. Behold! You are officially a guide on the side, aka the ULTIMATE teacher!

4. SUPPORT 

How will your kids ask for help while they’re learning? Will they email you or simply scream from the other end of the communal co-working space you’ve created?

In the classroom our kids may raise their hands, or they may walk up to the teacher. In our homes (and I’d argue even in the classroom) there are better ways for getting support when you’re stuck. 

May I suggest a few strategies for support that may supercede screaming or frantically jumping up and down while you attempt to engage in a department wide video call?

• Move On For Now: Write down your question in your daily activities page (template below) and move on for now.

• Ask Me: If your question prevents you from moving on, send a text to me and I’ll come over and help when I can

• Use Your Resources: Encourage your kids to access one of these child-friendly websites:

  • Kiddle (created by, you guessed it: Google)

  • Kidtopia

Here’s a great opportunity to help your kids develop essential skills that will boost executive functioning skills (regular people speak: solve problems on your own!). Using the language that feels right for your kiddos, consider adopting these strategies when your kids get stuck:

• Is this something that is available in my notes? 

• Is this something that is available to see if I go back through the learning I’ve done?

• Is this something I can ask my sibling about? Can I FaceTime a friend (yes, this reeks of privilege.)

Establishing ways your kids can ask for support increases CLARITY about this new process and also ensures that they are developing awesome and hugely important skills for becoming more self-reliant learners. It may prevent us from ever seeing something as amazing as this again but us work from home folks (mainly women) may not mind that so much. So...perhaps proceed with caution? 

5. FEEDBACK

This probably should have been number one, but I think all of these should be number one so this is now number five. 

This one is simple: If you’re going to give your kids stuff to do, please be sure you look at it and give them feedback.

But what feedback should I give? I’m so glad you asked. Here are some helpful prompts:

• I was really excited to see your work doing … today, I wonder if you can see a connection between what you’ve learned and ….

• It looks like you spent a lot of time on ….do you have any questions about this work or why it’s important to know?

• What is something about …. that most surprised you?

• What is something you’d like to spend more time learning about tomorrow?

If you are giving them busywork and it has no inherent purpose, please consider NOT giving it at all. In fact, please let them go play instead. 

Want to learn about how during play our kids are often learning far more than they are in the classroom? Read more here, here, and here. 

6. FLEXIBILITY 

Perhaps the most solid piece of advice anyone could give is not advice at all but knowledge that we are together in solidarity in this experience. The reality is that life without schooling as we know it could go on indefinitely and our kids would be okay. Read that last sentence over again. 

This virus has turned us all into homeschoolers. And we are not alone. In fact, we’re in pretty good company.

What we’ve known for decades is that the way we’ve done school, broken up into discrete segments, is not working. Yes, I’m aware that I’m saying that while also giving you templates for how to recreate this broken system in your own home. Old habits die hard. It’s a process that we have to unlearn together.

What we’ll soon see is that NOT administering the inane yearly standardized tests is NOT the end of the world. 

In fact, we will likely see that the mental health of our students improves and the opportunity to learn rich content increases if we are not tethered to standardized tests. 

Removing sanctions from learning sets us free to learn because as humans we are innately curious creatures. 

During this time I invite you to reach out for support, be flexible with yourself and your kids, and if we’re intentional, this could actually be an opportunity to innovate on the way that we’ve always done school to make it better and more meaningful for all of us.

THREE TEMPLATES FOR TODAY, NOT FOREVER

These are the three templates that we’ve already iterated upon a zillion times to swap out different learning experiences. I’ve stuck with the initial links to Khan Academy because we think their content is stellar and it's a simple and seamless way to begin.

As an author and educator my work is my currency and directly tied to my credibility. As such I invite you to use my work with attribution**:

Daily Activities: Your mileage may vary. Use this as a flexible template to add the work that your kids are doing in their schools or the content that they are most excited to learn about. 

Morning Reflection: This is a flexible template that will provide opportunities to reflect on the things that brought your children joy, the questions they still have, or the areas they may still wish to explore. I cannot state enough how much this piece is MAGICAL! Here is where you can guide your kids to create their own design thinking experiences around the content that THEY want to learn most about in the world.

Today I Learned: Another flexible template that is a final reflection at the end of the day that is a GREAT place to start for providing FEEDBACK and seeing where your kids need SUPPORT. This is also a stellar way to build design thinking experiences into future learning as your kids learn to rely more on themselves as active co-creators and not passive consumers of knowledge. This is the ultimate goal of learning (IMO).

**A surefire way to avoid plagiarism? Cite your sources! Learn more about plagiarism here.

Yes, even when you’ve removed quotations or think you are paraphrasing what you have learned from another you must still cite the author. Hard stop. Otherwise you are engaged in plagiarism and that’s not cool.

Speaking of attribution, I want to give a shout out to Kasey Bell who taught me how to make my google documents available for anyone to copy while not altering the original form. Score!

Preparing for Learning Without Disruption in collaboration with Dr. Karen Reiss Medwed

Equitably meeting the needs of all learners necessitates mindfulness—not only of available resources, but also of the potential burden of accessing those resources. It may also be an opportunity to leverage promising new tools to advance interdisciplinary knowledge through multimodal learning, and perhaps enhance our home-to-school connections in the process.

Read more here: https://ace-ed.org/preparing-for-learning-without-disruption17360-2/

Design Thinking: A Thought Experiment to Address Politics, Addiction, and Climate Change

In the past few months the fires in Australia have destroyed the lives of 25 people, over a billion animals, and have decimated over 25.5 million acres of land including over a thousand homes*. As a society we seem wholly unable to solve or even come together to think about climate change, how an unpopular president is elected as leader of the free world, or how the overmedication of Americans has contributed to the opioid crisis despite a generously funded war on drugs. Perhaps the reason we cannot get our arms around each issue is because we fail to think in a certain way. Is it possible then that a thought experiment such as design thinking could change the way we address issues in politics, addiction, and possibly climate change? 

It feels brash to suggest we’d cure every societal ill with a simple shift in our thinking, yet many of our essential understandings of the world have emerged from thought experiments. Each thought experiment inspired a new way of solving a persistent problem from the theory of relativity to Schrödinger's cat and my favorite of all time, the Turing Test. 

Alan Turing wondered if a computer could fool a human into thinking that the machine was in fact another human. To do so he had to consider what would be required of a machine to appear human to another human. He had to consider the actions that should be programmed into the machine while also anticipating the responses of the real human sitting on the other end of that device. It is because of his ability to think through the questions from the perspective of an ‘other,’ that Turing could prototype and iterate to turn his Turing Test into a Turing Machine.

Thought experiments are the ultimate “what if” because they begin with an urgent question and are followed by a host of wildly varied potential solutions that themselves may produce wildly varied outcomes. If we’re lucky, one of those outcomes may actually work. But we won’t know if we don’t ask. 

Turing’s thought experiment birthed artificial intelligence, a concept that if broken into component parts is strikingly similar to the process of design thinking: pose a problem, design a solution, iterate and revise. 

Like a good thought experiment, design thinking requires understanding for empathy, or perspective. Solving problems requires distinguishing mere symptoms from the root cause. Addressing symptoms may (for a time) lessen the problem. But only by understanding the perspective of the ‘other’ can you move towards identifying and researching the root cause before designing a solution. 

When my son has a sore throat I can give him tea to lessen the pain, but that merely addresses the symptom. If the root cause is a bacterial infection only antibiotics will remove the bacteria and ease the pain. Can we use the thought experiment of design thinking to understand both how we got to this place and how we might actually get out?

If we were to apply the lens of design thinking to understanding politics, addiction, and climate change we might find that our inherent bias makes it difficult to take the perspective of another or to see the subjectivity of our own beliefs. Let’s explore how an unpopular president was elected despite the poll results. 

Understanding for empathy sheds light on the fact that pollsters may not have asked voters the best questions. Perhaps the words used in their questions are themselves subjective or misleading. Or maybe we’d find that people are simply afraid to admit their own latent biases publicly while voting is (at least for now) confidential. If pollsters could anonymously collect information with no way to identify the person on the other end of the telephone line, would we have been less surprised in 2016? 

Design thinking is not only a way to approach problem solving, it’s also a way to approach learning. Systematically taking the perspective of others and asking questions forces us to see problems as they exist in the world around us from multiple often times novel positions. Moreover, our questioning, iteration, and revision offers a greater potential for sussing out root causes from symptoms and ultimately making powerful changes in the world around us.

I don’t mean to suggest we currently have answers to all the pressing questions, frankly I don’t believe we are even asking the right questions. But we can get there by inviting new voices into the asking and the solving. For instance, why aren’t we asking children to tell us what they see as the purpose of school and the utility of their learning? 

We continue to solve for symptoms (e.g., new sanctions, curriculum, or methods for testing our children) and not for the root cause (e.g., who is served by these sanctions, curriculum, or tests). If we can learn to ask better questions we will have a better chance at identifying and ultimately solving for root causes instead of simply putting band aids on symptoms.

The rain was nice for Australia, but the fires will continue to burn if we do not address the root cause and work to build solutions for a more sustainable future alongside those who will be left to inherit the earth once we’re gone.

*https://www.bustle.com/p/9-australia-fire-statistics-that-show-the-degree-of-its-impact-19777140 

Learn more about how design thinking can change the way we think, act, and change the world:

• Excerpt of Designed to Learn featured in the Washington Post: http://bit.ly/PrtnyWPArt

• Link to Designed to Learn from ASCD: http://bit.ly/PrtnyASCDBk

• Link to the Study Guide to ASCD book Designed To Learn: http://bit.ly/PrtnySG

• Interview about Designed to Learn on BAM Radio: http://bit.ly/PrtnyInt

HOW DESIGN THINKING EQUITABLY ELEVATES COMMUNITY VOICES FOR CHANGE

What happens when you invite elementary and middle school students along with their teachers, parents, and administrators to co-create solutions the most pressing concerns in their learning space? Perspectives shift, minds expand, and voices carry further than they ever have before.

Read more here: https://ace-ed.org/how-design-thinking-equitably-elevates-community-voices-for-change/

The PFC’s of Design Thinking to Activate Your Biological PFC

Amidst the constant buzz of disruption, innovation, and the “future of (fill in the blank)” there’s a large and untapped resource with the potential to revolutionize the way we do education. It’s something that comes prepackaged in each of us at birth and something that gives us the upper hand on the oft feared role of AI in our future. While humans are thankfully quite distinct from technology, we do have some tricks up our sleeves. Or perhaps in our skulls. These “tricks” are largely based on our ability to think flexibly and critically, take perspective and potentially empathize with others, and in our unique ability to create solutions to life’s most pressing and often promising challenges.

There is much ado about mystical ways to enhance learning or deepen engagement from quick fix to tech laden innovations. Yet the most promising way educators or policy makers might implement deep change requires little more than harnessing the innate capacity of each individual, and the built in technology that distinguishes us from other creatures: our prefrontal cortex or PFC (Carlén, 2017).

The region of the human brain developed most recently is also the part that supports our ability to plan, monitor, and regulate our lived experiences. And whether our PFC evolved for another purpose and has since been repurposed as the place of higher order thinking (HOT) the PFC may very well be our human superpower (Brown, Lau, & LeDoux, 2019).

Design thinking as a construct is hardly novel. A quick search of the history of design thinking surfaces talk of ‘wicked problems’ (Buchanan, 1992) or manufacturing materials (Hackman & Grimm, 1971). Yet the way in which teachers are using the practices to elicit higher order thinking, connections to content, and meaning making are quite revolutionary. Ultimately, the model of design thinking that I’ve put forth is based on iterative yet flexible application of knowledge in the pursuit of making a meaningful change.

The PFC’s of design thinking in my model include: Process (over product), Formative assessment (over single-shot summative assessment), and Creation (over consumption). And the research is clear, a focus on feedback through the process of learning (Berland & McNeill, 2010) and providing ongoing feedback (Weurlander, Söderberg, Scheja, Hult, & Wernerson, 2012) may be the best methods we hold to enact meaningful educational change.

Individual differences in thinking are made visible in the process of design thinking. These differences are not only highlighted but celebrated in a design thinking classroom. Moreover, the formative feedback during this process becomes future facing feedback that fuels continuous learning and purposeful engagement. What emerges from design thinking work is not only a concrete outcome but perhaps a different process, but the most important aspect of design thinking is the emphasis on creation over consumption of canned curriculum.

The same standards can be addressed in a way that provides learners with the autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2010) students crave to find meaning in applying learning in the world. What’s more, design thinking can happen in a single class period or an entire semester, in a stand alone course or school wide over the course of the year. The only requirement is a commitment to flexibility and iteration with an eye towards the application of knowledge towards a purposeful end.

The skills rooted in the PFC’s of Designed to Learn enhance our biological PFC and can be augmented by the technologies of today and tomorrow. In Designed to Learn, the elements of design thinking include a continuous focus on metacognition (learning to learn), self-regulated learning, and epistemology (nature of knowledge and knowing). In each element students and their educators reflect, revise, and rethink the way in which knowledge can be applied to design the change THEY want to see in the world.

How we think about our thinking, take the perspective of others, provide and receive feedback during learning, and create our own use of knowledge is often the best ways to enhance and support learning. Taken together, elements of design thinking can be used in tandem with the tech of today and those in our future to augment the process, feedback, and creation of powerful learning. Moreover, the emphasis of process over product, embedded formative feedback, and the nature of creation make design thinking a natural partner for innovative technologies. Design thinking taps into our latent skills and supports our learners today and in the future OUR STUDENTS have yet to create.

• Check out the book here: http://bit.ly/PrtnyASCDBk

• And don’t forget to get the free study guide here: http://bit.ly/PrtnySG

• For free design thinking documents to support the flexible yet intentional method I share in the book please reach out here: https://forms.gle/WvYnofmQuGjaUG1j6

• Read a sneak peek from the book in the Washington Post here: http://bit.ly/PrtnyWPArt

References

Berland, L., & McNeill, K. (2010). A learning progression for scientific argumentation: Understanding student work and designing supportive instructional contexts. Science Education, 94(5), 765-793.

Brown, R., Lau, H., & LeDoux, J. E. (2019). Understanding the higher-order approach to consciousness. Trends in cognitive sciences.

Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design issues, 8(2), 5-21.

Carlén, M. (2017). What constitutes the prefrontal cortex?. Science, 358(6362), 478-482.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). Self‐determination. The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology, 1-2.

Hackman, L., & Grimm, G. (1971). Designing and fabricating with filamentary composites. Materials Science and Engineering, 8(5), 249-258.

Weurlander, M., Söderberg, M., Scheja, M., Hult, H., & Wernerson, A. (2012). Exploring formative assessment as a tool for learning: Students' experiences of different methods of formative assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 37(6), 747-760.

What is design thinking? And why does it belong in Classrooms?

What is “design thinking,” and why does it belong in America’s classrooms?

Actually, as cognitive scientist Lindsay Portnoy explains in this post, many teachers are already using design thinking but may not know it.

Design thinking is a process for solving problems creatively and infusing meaning into what students learn, regardless of the subject or grade. She writes:

Innovative methods of teaching and learning like design thinking are helping students and teachers reframe the way that school is done. What has become clear is that the success of each individual won’t come from besting a computer or working more quickly or efficiently than a robot, but rather by using our innately human capacities of talking with others to debate, discuss and develop dynamic solutions toward our shared goals.

Design thinking is a method of applying knowledge to practice. Isn’t this also the definition of teaching?

Read more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/08/what-is-design-thinking-why-does-it-belong-classrooms/

Portnoy, L. (2019, October, 8) What is ‘design thinking’? And why does it belong in classrooms? Washington Post

Design thinking adds "why" to the "what" and "how" of learning

By the time our current 4th graders enter the workforce in the year 2026, more than 1.4 million U.S. jobs will be disrupted (changed or eliminated) by technology (World Economic Forum, 2018). At that same time, however, 48 new types of career opportunities will have been created. What is more, children today can expect to have more career changes than any previous generation. To prepare our youngest citizens for an exciting and uncertain future, schools must build skills such as creative thinking, problem solving, perseverance, and effective communication. Teaching our children to think like designers can foster this type of thinking.

From its origins in an engineering classroom several decades ago (Atman & Bursic, 1996), design thinking can be applied across the curriculum and with learners from preK to higher education. The only requirement is an open, curious mind and a desire to innovate. Plattner's (2010) model for design thinking (see Figure 1) provides an ideal canvas for learners to develop a sense of agency in their learning, and autonomy in their ability to innovate and iterate on problems that are most meaningful to their lives. The five, iterative stages of this model—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test—integrate "soft skills" like communication, collaboration, problem solving, and perspective-taking with the "hard skills" taught across the curriculum. Moreover, this model for design thinking engages students in the three-dimensional thinking presented in the Next Generation Science Standards (2013) framework, including domain-specific content (disciplinary core ideas), interdisciplinary connections (cross-cutting concepts), and skills and practices of successful problem solvers (science and engineering practices).

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Portnoy, L. (2018, April). Design thinking adds "why" to the "what" and "how" of learning. ASCD Express, 3(14). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol13/1315-portnoy.aspx