A Design-Thinking Approach to Public School

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Message A Design-Thinking Approach to Public School The push to teach 21st-century skills in America’s schools has sparked vigorous debate among educators. While stakeholders tend to accept the idea of incorporating innovation and creativity into everyday curricula, they remain skeptical of its practical implementation in classrooms: No one is certain how best to apply change. Perhaps that’s because new approaches like design thinking can be applied in myriad ways. Universities, from Rotman to Stanford, have provided some successful early models — and now primary and secondary schools are beginning to explore how design thinking can become part of their curriculum. The nonprofit Henry Ford Learning Institute is one example. HFLI is developing a network of public schools that teach students real-world skills alongside the three Rs, preparing them for college and professional life while connecting them with their communities. To lay the groundwork for getting 6th through 12th-graders to think like designers, HFLI partnered with IDEO. The goal was to establish a framework for developing curricula that meets traditional academic standards and also makes room for lessons in the valuable skills of the design thinker, such as creativity, adaptability, empathy, and synthesis. The collaborative effort began by asking: How could a public-school education foster innovation explicitly? How much should it adhere to the existing paradigm (or move away from it)? How could the system empower students? To answer these questions and more, IDEO and HFLI convened a group of experts from around the country to identify the core attributes of an innovator and to imagine a school environment that would produce graduates with those traits. Based on the insights gathered, IDEO and HFLI came up with a framework for meeting traditional academic standards while feeding into design-thinking challenges. IDEO and HFLI then worked with EDC, a nationally recognized curriculum-development company, to help define what it meant to embed the values, mindsets, behaviors, and knowledge of a design thinker into a core curriculum. The new structure organizes each quarter around a particular design challenge, and aligns the academic content covered in the discipline-based classes with the design challenge at hand to provide relevant knowledge. The academic calendar includes “Stop, Drop, and Design” days, during which regular classes are suspended so that students can focus on their group project. Young people work in teams based on their grade level, building process-based skills (communication, prototyping, empathy, collaboration, etc.) as they solve real-world problems. Over the course of their school experience, the challenges grow increasingly complex. For example, sixth-graders might be tasked with creating a better study area for a partner. The assignment requires them to interview each other, research ergonomics, and observe various work spaces. Next, they’re asked to brainstorm, develop, and test a prototype, drawing on the knowledge they’ve gleaned from math, science, and other courses. “We believe that engagement with a series of progressively complex hands-on innovation projects leads students to develop deep and meaningful knowledge of the conditions of their world, a conscious understanding of their role in that world, a commitment to taking action to change that world for the better, and a significant focus on the future,” says Deborah Parizek, executive director of HFLI told EdWeek. By using design as the basis for learning, students will develop the ability to think critically, empowering them to become effective leaders, regardless of what career paths they choose. Henry Ford Learning Institute has schools in Chicago, Dearborn (Michigan), Detroit, and San Antonio. HFLI also is developing a 10-week course called “Foundations in Innovation” in collaboration with the K-12 Lab at Stanford’s d.school to familiarize middle- and high-school students with the techniques and tools that support collaborative innovation. It plans to make the program available to any school that’s interested in supporting the development of creative problem-solvers. http://www.ideo.com/work/a-design-thinking-approach-to-public-school/

The push to teach 21st-century skills in America’s schools has sparked vigorous debate among educators. While stakeholders tend to accept the idea of incorporating innovation and creativity into everyday curricula, they remain skeptical of its practical implementation in classrooms: No one is certain how best to apply change. Perhaps that’s because new approaches like design thinking can be applied in myriad ways. Universities, from Rotman to Stanford, have provided some successful early models — and now primary and secondary schools are beginning to explore how design thinking can become part of their curriculum.

The nonprofit Henry Ford Learning Institute is one example. HFLI is developing a network of public schools that teach students real-world skills alongside the three Rs, preparing them for college and professional life while connecting them with their communities. To lay the groundwork for getting 6th through 12th-graders to think like designers, HFLI partnered with IDEO. The goal was to establish a framework for developing curricula that meets traditional academic standards and also makes room for lessons in the valuable skills of the design thinker, such as creativity, adaptability, empathy, and synthesis.

The collaborative effort began by asking: How could a public-school education foster innovation explicitly? How much should it adhere to the existing paradigm (or move away from it)? How could the system empower students? To answer these questions and more, IDEO and HFLI convened a group of experts from around the country to identify the core attributes of an innovator and to imagine a school environment that would produce graduates with those traits.

Based on the insights gathered, IDEO and HFLI came up with a framework for meeting traditional academic standards while feeding into design-thinking challenges. IDEO and HFLI then worked with EDC, a nationally recognized curriculum-development company, to help define what it meant to embed the values, mindsets, behaviors, and knowledge of a design thinker into a core curriculum. The new structure organizes each quarter around a particular design challenge, and aligns the academic content covered in the discipline-based classes with the design challenge at hand to provide relevant knowledge. The academic calendar includes “Stop, Drop, and Design” days, during which regular classes are suspended so that students can focus on their group project. Young people work in teams based on their grade level, building process-based skills (communication, prototyping, empathy, collaboration, etc.) as they solve real-world problems. Over the course of their school experience, the challenges grow increasingly complex. For example, sixth-graders might be tasked with creating a better study area for a partner. The assignment requires them to interview each other, research ergonomics, and observe various work spaces. Next, they’re asked to brainstorm, develop, and test a prototype, drawing on the knowledge they’ve gleaned from math, science, and other courses.

“We believe that engagement with a series of progressively complex hands-on innovation projects leads students to develop deep and meaningful knowledge of the conditions of their world, a conscious understanding of their role in that world, a commitment to taking action to change that world for the better, and a significant focus on the future,” says Deborah Parizek, executive director of HFLI told EdWeek.

By using design as the basis for learning, students will develop the ability to think critically, empowering them to become effective leaders, regardless of what career paths they choose. Henry Ford Learning Institute has schools in Chicago, Dearborn (Michigan), Detroit, and San Antonio. HFLI also is developing a 10-week course called “Foundations in Innovation” in collaboration with the K-12 Lab at Stanford’s d.school to familiarize middle- and high-school students with the techniques and tools that support collaborative innovation. It plans to make the program available to any school that’s interested in supporting the development of creative problem-solvers.