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Defining and designing a new grammar of school with design thinking: a promising practice study

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Defining and designing a new grammar of school with design thinking: a promising practice study

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Content DEFINING AND DESIGNING A NEW GRAMMAR OF SCHOOL WITH DESIGN
THINKING: A PROMISING PRACTICE STUDY
by
Sabba Quidwai
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
August 2020
Copyright 2020 Sabba Quidwai
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. vi
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii
Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................................... viii
Background of the Problem .................................................................................................2
The Grammar of Schooling ...........................................................................................2
The New Digital Divide .................................................................................................5
Defining and Designing a New Grammar of School with Design Thinking .................5
Importance of a Promising Practice Project.........................................................................8
Organizational Context and Mission ...................................................................................9
Organizational Performance Status....................................................................................10
Organizational Performance Goal and Current Performance ............................................11
Description of Stakeholder Groups ....................................................................................11
Stakeholder Group for the Study .......................................................................................12
Purpose of the Project and Questions ................................................................................13
Conceptual and Methodological Framework .....................................................................13
Organization of the Project ................................................................................................14
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature .........................................................................................15
The History of Industrial Revolutions and Education Reform ....................................15
Automation and Augmentation: The Changing Demand for Skills .............................21
Design Thinking: An Approach to K12 Curriculum .........................................................25
Origins of Design Thinking .........................................................................................25
The Skills of a Design Thinker ....................................................................................27
The Mindset of a Design Thinker ................................................................................28
The Value of Design Thinking in Schools ...................................................................29
iii
Creating Equitable Environments: Bridging the Digital Use Divide with Design
Thinking .............................................................................................................................32
The Equity Challenge: A New Digital Divide .............................................................32
Role of Educators in Using Design Thinking to Bridge the Digital Use Divide .........36
Role of Assessment: Assessing the Process not the Product .......................................38
LEDs Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Assets ................................................40
Knowledge and Skills ..................................................................................................40
Motivation ....................................................................................................................44
Organizational Influences ............................................................................................47
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................50
Chapter Three: Methods ................................................................................................................52
Participating Stakeholders .................................................................................................53
Survey Sampling Criterion and Rationale ...................................................................53
Focus Group/Individual Sampling Criterion and Rationale ........................................53
Focus Group/Individual Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale ........................54
Observation Sampling Criterion and Rationale ...........................................................54
Data Collection and Instrumentation .................................................................................55
Survey ..........................................................................................................................55
Focus Group Interviews ...............................................................................................56
Observation ..................................................................................................................57
Documents and Artifacts..............................................................................................58
Data Analysis .....................................................................................................................58
Credibility and Trustworthiness .........................................................................................60
Ethics..................................................................................................................................61
Limitations and Delimitations............................................................................................62
Chapter Four: Results and Findings ...............................................................................................64
iv
Participating Stakeholders .................................................................................................66
Findings of Assumed Knowledge Assets ..........................................................................66
Understanding the Design Thinking Process ...............................................................67
Integrating Design Thinking Into the Curriculum .......................................................71
Reflecting on Integrating Design Thinking .................................................................81
Synthesis of Results and Findings for Knowledge Influences.....................................83
Findings of Assumed Motivation Influences .....................................................................84
LED’s Utility Value for Teaching Design Thinking ...................................................85
LEDs Self-Efficacy About Teaching Design Thinking ...............................................93
LEDs Mastery Orientation About Teaching Design Thinking ....................................95
Synthesis of Results and Findings for Motivation Influences .....................................97
Findings of Assumed Organization Influences ..................................................................98
Design39 Cultivates a Culture of Innovation Among LEDs to Change
Traditional Methods of Teaching.................................................................................99
Design39 Provides Professional Development to LEDs, So They Can Continue to
Enhance and Develop Their Ability to Integrate Design Thinking into the
Curriculum .................................................................................................................104
Design39 Creates a Schedule That Allows for the Integration of Design Thinking
Into the Curriculum ....................................................................................................107
Synthesis of Results and Findings for Organizational Influences .............................109
Emerging Themes ............................................................................................................110
Knowledge: Educators Must Recognize Themselves as Learning Experience
Designers....................................................................................................................110
Motivation: Seeing the Value of Design Thinking ....................................................111
Organization: Using Empathy to Create a Culture of Innovation..............................112
Chapter Five: Recommendations, Implementation, and Evaluation ...........................................116
Recommended Solutions from Emerging Themes ..........................................................119
v
Recommendations Based on Emerging Themes..............................................................119
Theme 1: Educators Must Recognize Themselves as Learning Experience
Designers....................................................................................................................119
Theme 2: Seeing the Value of Design Thinking ........................................................125
Theme 3: Designing a Culture of Innovation ............................................................128
Implementation Plan ........................................................................................................131
Evaluation Plan ................................................................................................................133
Future Research ...............................................................................................................136
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................137
References ....................................................................................................................................139
Appendix A Interview Protocol ...................................................................................................151
Appendix B Observation Protocol ...............................................................................................153
Appendix C Recruitment Letter ...................................................................................................154

vi
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Comparing Skills Demand 2018 vs 2022 ...........................................................................4
Table 2 Relationship between Papert’s constructionism principles and design thinking. ...............6
Table 3 Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions for Students at Design39 ..........................................9
Table 4 Assumed Knowledge Assets .............................................................................................44
Table 5 Assumed Motivation Assets .............................................................................................47
Table 6 Assumed Organizational Influences .................................................................................50
Table 7 Assumed Knowledge Assets .............................................................................................67
Table 8 Assumed Motivation Assets .............................................................................................85
Table 9 Assumed Organization Assets ..........................................................................................99
Table 10 Moving From Teacher-Centered to Learner-Centered Environment ...........................114
Table 11 Emerging Themes From Findings on Knowledge, Motivation and Organization
Assets ...........................................................................................................................................119
Table 12 Summary of Recommendations with Action Steps, Timelines and Possible
Constraints ...................................................................................................................................132
Table 13 Evaluation plan to assess implementation ....................................................................133

vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 U.S. Job Skill Demand, 1969-1999 .................................................................................22
Figure 2 Changing Work Tasks in U.S. Economy.........................................................................23
Figure 3 I Could Teach Someone Else How To Integrate Design Thinking Into Their
Curriculum .....................................................................................................................................69
Figure 4 LEDs Confidence in Integrating Design Thinking Into the Curriculum .........................72
Figure 5 Design Thinking is an Approach That Prepares Students With the Following Skills.....87
Figure 6 Design Thinking is an Approach That Prepares Students With the Following
Mindsets .........................................................................................................................................88
Figure 7 How Often do you Collaborate With Your Grade Level Team? .....................................95
Figure 8 I Feel Supported by My Leadership To Try New Teaching Methods ..........................100
Figure 9 Framework for Mastery: masterycollaborative.org .......................................................124

viii
ABSTRACT

There is a weakening link worldwide emerging between education and economic
mobility. Despite the changing expectations of the workplace brought forth by the Fourth
Industrial Revolution, todays education systems largely remain unchanged and are not preparing
graduates with the knowledge, skills and to thrive in future workplaces. Furthermore, the lack
of equity has led to a growing digital use divide deepening the fragmentation of society. It is
critical that education systems change the grammar of schooling, providing students with the
skills and mindsets they need, and that today’s employers expect, and that civil society needs to
thrive. This study examines how educators at a TK-8 school, Design39 Campus, utilized design
thinking to define and design a new grammar of school, providing students with the knowledge,
skills and mindsets to innovate, create new products, services and business models so that they
can thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. The results indicate strong agreement
amongst the educators between developing in demand skills such as creativity, problem finding,
collaboration and communication and practicing design thinking. In addition to skills the
students are developing a strong mindset of empathy, creative confidence, learning from failure
and optimism. Seeing their students and themselves enhance and develop the skills and mindset
of a design thinker demonstrated the value in using design thinking and fueled their motivation
to continue. It strengthened their self-efficacy and helped them embrace, not fear change. A set
of is recommendations and an implementation and evaluation plan are shared for how other
schools can integrate design thinking to transform their culture of teaching and learning.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
There is a weakening link worldwide emerging between education and economic
mobility. Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014) call this era, “The Second Machine Age;”
characterized by advances in technology, such as the rise of big data, mobility, artificial
intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. The Covid-19 health pandemic revealed a
challenge identified by Schwab (2016) where the Second Machine Age would blur the lines
between the physical, digital and biological worlds in what he called “The Fourth Industrial
Revolution.” Furthermore, the centuries old racial inequities that drive our social, political and
economic policies are being exacerbated, and while optimism prevails about the prospects this
new age can bring, many hold deep reservations. Schwab (2016) warned, as did Brynjolfsson
and McAfee (2014), that failure by organizations to prepare and adapt could cause inequality and
fragment societies. While the dynamics of today’s world have the potential to create enormous
prosperity, the challenge to societies, particularly businesses, governments and education
systems, will be to create access to opportunities that will allow everyone to share in the
prosperity. Schwab, Brynjolfsson and McAfee advocate for schools being able to play a
powerful role in shaping a future that is technology-driven and human-centered (Brynjolfsson &
McAfee, 2014; Schwab, 2016). Design thinking, a human-centered framework for addressing
complex challenges, is one method that can provide schools with a framework to define and
design a new grammar of school. One that moves away from the traditional model established
during the industrial area. A new grammar of school will be one to provide students with the
knowledge, skills and mindsets to experience success by being able to innovate, create new
products, services and business models that so that they can thrive in future workplaces and as
global citizens (Brynjolfsson et al., 2014).
2
According to The Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum, 2018), by 2022, it is
estimated that 42% of workplace tasks will be automated, compared to 29% in 2018. While the
demand for new roles will outnumber the roles that are being replaced by machines, access to
these new roles will require a fundamental shift in the knowledge, skills and mindsets of workers
(Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014). As workplaces determine how to leverage new and emerging
technologies in ways that serve humanity, the two critical skills expected will be the ability to
solve unstructured problems and to engage in complex communication, two areas that allow
workers to augment what machines can do (Levy & Murnane, 2013.) Despite the changing
expectations of the workplace brought forth by the Second Machine Age, todays education
systems largely remain unchanged and are not preparing graduates with the knowledge, skills
and to thrive in future workplaces. Furthermore, the lack of equity has led to a growing digital
use divide deepening the fragmentation of society. It is critical that education systems change the
grammar of schooling, providing students with the skills and mindsets they need, and that
today’s employers expect, and that civil society needs to thrive (Tyack & Tobin, 1994). The
problem of practice addressed by this dissertation is how design thinking can be used as one
approach in K12 education to define and design a new grammar of school, providing students
with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to innovate, create new products, services and business
models so that they can thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens.
Background of the Problem
The Grammar of Schooling
Since the beginnings of public education, there have been competing educational
philosophies exploring the quintessential question in education raised by Sarason (2004), “What
do you mean by learning?” Tyack and Tobin (1994) termed the industrial model of education,
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“the grammar of schooling,” a metaphor that identifies the structures and rules that govern
schools that have practices such as grading systems, school schedules, compartmentalized
subject areas of focus and educators in grade level classrooms that would remain in place for
decades to come. While history is rife with progressive education reform movements and
attempts to redesign school, the lack of effectively engaging the community combined with
teacher turnover and burnout, among other reasons, have led to traditional practices becoming
institutionalized (Resnick, 2017; Robinson & Aronica, 2016; Tyack & Tobin, 1994). In 2004,
Sarason expanded on this idea and called the grammar of school a set of rules and formulaic
procedures, “behavioral and programmatic regularities,” that leads to a system where a school is
run like a business whose practices are often left unexamined while the world outside is rapidly
changing.
Despite the competing views about what learning should look like, the industrial model
remained largely untouched. It was not until 1983 when, “A Nation at Risk,” published under the
Reagan Administration, shared a narrative of failing schools that were potentially threatening the
economic future of the United States, in comparison to nations around the world, that a new
sense of urgency provoked educational reform. This report challenged the role of federalism in
public education by associating improving schools and improving the economy, creating an
opportunity to redefine the role and authority of the central, state and local governments
(Fusarelli & Fusarelli, 2015). What followed was a series of education reforms from No Child
Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002 under the Bush and Clinton administrations, the Common Core
Standards (CCSS) in 2009 and Race to the Top (RTTP) in 2020. While these education reforms
were designed to strengthen the link between education systems and economic mobility, in many
ways, the opposite happened, leading to an era of standardization driven by testing (Fusarelli &
4
Fusarelli, 2015). This has created an environment that nurtures the antithesis of the skills and
mindsets required by the workforce in the age of automation (Mehta & Fine, 2019; Frey &
Osborne, 2017; Wagner, 2012.
The Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum, 2018) compares the demand for
skills in 2018 vs 2022 and notes skills that are demanded today with those that will be “trending”
and “declining” in 2022 (Table 1).
Table 1
Comparing Skills Demand 2018 vs 2022
Today, 2018 Trending, 2022 Declining, 2022
Analytical thinking and
innovation
Analytical thinking and innovation
Manual dexterity,
endurance and precision
Complex problem solving
Active learning and learning
strategies
Memory, verbal, auditory
and spatial abilities
Critical thinking and analysis Creativity, originality and initiative
Management of financial,
material resources
Active learning and learning
strategies
Technology, design and programming
Technology installation
and maintenance
Creativity, originality and
initiative
Critical thinking and analysis
Reading, writing, math
and active listening
Attention to detail,
trustworthiness
Complex problem solving Management of personnel
Emotional intelligence Leadership and social influence
Quality control and safety
awareness
Reasoning, problem solving and
ideation
Emotional intelligence
Coordination and time
management
Leadership and social influence
Reasoning, problem-solving and
ideation
Visual, auditory and
speech abilities
Coordination and time
management
Systems analysis and evaluation
Technology use,
monitoring and control

Creating environments where all students have the opportunity to develop the skills and
mindsets needed to thrive in the Second Machine Age is a significant challenge facing societies,
working to address the disadvantages of unemployment and greater wealth inequity (Makridakis,
2017).

5
The New Digital Divide
For the past 50 years policy makers have attempted to prepare students for future
workplaces by advocating for computers to be placed in the hands of every student as a means of
bridging the digital divide, where poor and minority families are less likely to have access to the
computer or internet compared to their wealthier counterparts (Attewell, 2001). The divide is
exacerbated by the challenge to close the “achievement gap” drowning students in a curriculum
made up of segmented knowledge and skills with “more worksheets than books, more rote
practice than exploration of ideas and more memorization than thinking” (Kohn, 2011). Kohn
(2011) highlights that “school” has different meanings for children from different backgrounds,
where schools for the affluent are about inquiry and choice, and schools for the poor are about
drills and compliance, a challenge that perpetuates the pedagogy of poverty integration of
technology in schools. However, Attewell (2001) proposes that placing computers in the hands
of every student is not a solution because the challenge lies in addressing the “digital use divide,”
what Attewell defines as, “changing the tasks that students do when provided with computers.”
Design thinking is an approach that can provide the strategies and tools needed to help schools
redesign their environments and tasks that students do to enhance and develop the skills and
mindsets outlined in the Future of Jobs Report.
Defining and Designing a New Grammar of School with Design Thinking
From new models that are being created to enhancements being made to traditional
approaches to schooling, a variety of different approaches to teaching and learning are emerging
in an attempt to provide students the skills and mindsets they need to thrive as global citizens.
Sarason (2004) urges the conversation to begin with defining the most often used term in
education - learning. This question is critical to address for students and for educators as well, as
6
they are often left out of the learning conversation. School should be a place where everyone,
adult and child, is a learner (Sarason, 2004). The constructionism principles outlined by Papert
(1999) offer one definition for what learning can look like where knowledge is socially
constructed and that learning takes place through doing. It is here that the design thinking
framework provides us with a method and language to actualize the definition of learning as
outlined by Papert in his eight principles. The following table highlights the similarities between
constructionism and design thinking principles:
Table 2
Relationship between Papert’s constructionism principles and design thinking.
Papert’s Constructionism Principles Design Thinking Mindsets
Learning by doing Making and iterating, creative confidence, optimism,
learning from failure
Technology for making Making and iterating, creative confidence
Learning should be fun Optimism
Taking charge of your own learning Empathy, comfort with ambiguity
Managing your time Comfort with ambiguity
Learning from failure Creative confidence, learning from failure
Let students see learning is a struggle Empathy, learning from failure, making and iterating
Prepare for the digital world All of the design thinking mindsets

Design thinking has shown promise in being integrated more systematically across the K-
12 curriculum, complementing the Common Core and NGSS standards, and incorporating some
of the core elements of the maker movement and genius hour style innovations with an emphasis
on developing skills, mindsets and finding and solving problems (Brown & Wyatt, 2010; Chin et
al., 2019; Razzouk & Shute, 2012). Design Thinking was popularized by IDEO, a global design
firm, and was later adopted by the Stanford d.School and differs from other problem-solving
approaches because it begins with empathy and understanding the systems and users at the
beginning of the process by moving through three phases - inspiration, ideation and
7
implementation (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). Furthermore, as students move through the different
phases of the design thinking process, they have the opportunity to enhance and develop a set of
mindsets. These mindsets are identified by IDEO as empathy, learning from failure, making,
iterating, optimism, comfort with ambiguity and creative confidence (2019). Design thinking
provides students with an opportunity to develop increased self-awareness, an opportunity to
understand and enhance their strengths and acknowledge their weaknesses (Brown & Wyatt,
2010).
Defining and designing a new grammar of school is not just about solving an economic
or technology challenge, it is about solving a human challenge, where every learner has an
opportunity to reach their potential. The Covid-19 health pandemic has brought to the forefront
the numerous political, social and economic inequities that plague the United States and the
powerful role that schools can and do play. This is a challenge whose roots run far deeper than
recognized, and it must be brought to the forefront to address the racial inequity that exists
within the system itself. Education and racial equity reform have a deep-rooted relationship
throughout history in the United States. Students of color throughout history have continuously
been marginalized, overtly before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and covertly in the
years that followed (Fiske, 1993) perpetuating the inequity and creating “a digital use divide”
with the rise of technology. The students of tomorrow will most likely have to be the
entrepreneurs of their own professional journey, as they will encounter jobs that they did not
grow up knowing and will likely find themselves in situations where they have to create their
own (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014) and design thinking can provide schools, not just those in
the traditional sense but home school programs, after school programs and a variety of other
8
informal and non-formal settings, providing students with an opportunity to develop the skills
and mindsets to be agile and nimble in the face of change.
Importance of a Promising Practice Project
It is important to examine promising practices in the context of this problem of practice
for a variety of reasons. The consequences of not solving the problem of preparing students for a
rapidly changing world, is amongst one of the many reasons, that will lead to increased inequity
across and within societies. As evidenced by the growing divide between education and the
workforce, there is a current mismatch between the skills and competencies that are currently
emphasized in systems of education and the skills, mindsets and competencies needed to thrive
in future workplaces and as global citizens. If students are to take advantage of the opportunities
brought forth by The Fourth Industrial Revolution, skill development in areas that are trending,
such as analytical thinking and innovation, active learning, and complex problem solving, and
job creation need to be in place (Barton, Farrell, & Mourshed, 2013). Whereas previous
industrial revolutions moved at a slower pace, allowing increased time to develop new training
models to prepare people with the adequate skills needed, the Future of Jobs report (World
Economic Forum, 2018) stresses the urgency of responding to the need for a more skilled
workforce around trending skills vs declining skills. By 2022, the report predicts a net
employment impact of 5.1 million jobs lost to disruptive labor market changes with a total job
loss of 7.1 million jobs, two-thirds of which are routine manual and cognitive tasks. The outcome
will be determined by how we educate and prepare everyone with the skills and mindset needed
to do tasks that complement machines. To address these concerns, it will be important to study
and learn from promising practices using new approaches to give students the skills and
competencies they need to fully participate in the world of work and as global citizens.
9
Organizational Context and Mission
The organization of study is Design39, a TK-8 public school established in 2014 as part
of the Poway School District in San Diego, California. The organization’s mission is to, “create
learning experiences that are designed with the individual learner in mind. As a collaborative
community, we nurture creative confidence, practice design thinking, learn through inquiry,
connect globally, use technology and real-world tools, and promote the courage and growth
mindset necessary to change the world” (Erpelding, 2018). Design39 is formed upon eight
guiding principles – design thinking, connecting globally, personalization, creativity, inquiry,
growth mindset, communication, collaboration and technology. Furthermore, they have grouped
learning into three distinct categories outlined in Table 3.
Table 3
Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions for Students at Design39
Knowledge
Understanding someone or
something
Skills
Capacities and strategies that enable
learners to apply knowledge
Dispositions (Mindsets)
Behaviors that contribute to
fulfilling potential
State Standards Design Thinking Agency
Essential Literacies Collaboration Curiosity
Global Competence Creativity Grit
Applied Knowledge Inquiry Gratitude
Career and Technical Ed. Communication Optimism
Connect Globally Purpose
Critical Thinking Emotional Intelligence
Metacognition Self-Control
Learning how to Learn Zest
Time Management Growth - Mindset
Problem Solving
Ideation

At the core of the school, educators are designers of learning experiences, or as Design39
refers to their faculty – Learning Experience Designers (LEDs). 2018 data from the California
10
School Dashboard shows that Design39 currently employs 54 LEDs across TK-8 who all hold a
state-licensed teaching credential. Design39 currently has 1159 students enrolled. The student
demographic consists of 45.6% White, 30.9% Asian, 5.2% Filipino, 7.8% Hispanic or Latino,
0.6% Pacific Islander and 1.0% African Americans. 13.2% of students are English Language
Learners and 11.6% are Free and Reduced Lunch, students who qualify for federally assisted
meals determined by family income.
Organizational Performance Status
The Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum, 2018) states that 65% of children in
kindergarten will have opportunities that do not currently exist, and, as a result, schools face the
ill structured problem of how to best prepare students today for the workforce of tomorrow. The
trending skills identified by The Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum, 2018) are in
alignment with the skills and mindsets outlined by Design39. While a design thinking approach
in schools is relatively new, using design thinking as a foundation for providing students with the
skills and mindsets needed for the 21st century has yielded high performance results for Design39
when compared to schools in California. According to the 2018 California School Dashboard,
providing information on school and district progress, in English-Language Arts Design39
students scored 74.2 points above the state average and in Mathematics students scored 52.8
points above the state average. In 2018, Design39 was ranked as the highest performing middle
school in the Poway Unified School District and surpassed the district on every key indicator of
school climate and student well-being in 2017. In addition, in 2015 Design39 received the,
“Classroom of the Future,” award from the Classroom of the Future Foundation of Edmin Inc.
When funding for districts often rests on standardized test scores, this data suggests that
engaging students in more meaningful learning experiences allows them to thrive on traditional
11
exams while mastering 21st century skills. The success has led to the sustainability of the new
campus and increasing enrollment from 831 in 2014 to 1159 in 2018 (EdData, 2019.)
Organizational Performance Goal and Current Performance
Since 2014, the goal of Design39 has been to create learning experiences that are
designed with the individual learner in mind to empower students with the knowledge, skills and
dispositions (mindsets) to thrive as “life ready thought leaders elevating humanity” (Erpelding,
2018). Instead of rotating through traditional classes where each subject is taught independently,
the LEDs collaborate to design learning experiences that merge knowledge, skills and mindsets
across subject matter areas. This is done additionally through deep dives - an opportunity for
students to extend a passion, and explorations - where students can try different things and
explore interests. Design39 was established when John Collins, the Superintendent of the Poway
Unified School District, asked five educators and two administrators to research school models,
draw on business practices and use design thinking to envision a new school model. Prior to
leading Design39, Principal Joseph Erpelding visited over 30 different schools, now he visits
different businesses on a regular basis to ensure that the experiences he is providing to students is
relevant to what is happening in real world environments. Currently, Design 39 students score
well above the state average in both Mathematics and English Language Arts and the school has
been formally recognized as a Classroom of the Future.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
There are a number of invested stakeholder groups that contribute to Design39’s
performance, including the governing council, educators who are Learning Experience Designers
(LEDs), and administrators. Design39 has a governing council that is a diverse group of eight
12
elected and appointed parents, educators, staff and community members who advise the
Design39 leadership team on school-wide decisions, short-term and long-term goals.
The student experience is iterated on a daily basis as the LEDs meet for one hour each
morning before students arrive. Unlike traditional classrooms, in the elementary space, students
do not spend the entire day with only one LED. They begin the day with Homeroom, where they
meet with the same LED and peers every day. LEDs work together to provide an
interdisciplinary curriculum through integrated learning time, deep dives, explorations and minds
in motion. For the knowledge, skills and mindsets of design thinking to be integrated into the
curriculum in alignment with the Design39 mission, the LEDs are an integral stakeholder group.
The administrators provide extensive support and leadership to create and nurture the culture
necessary for the school to be successful. Principal Joseph Erpelding leads and nurtures a culture
of empathy and trust that provides students and educators with autonomy, mastery, and purpose
to implement the vision and define and design a new grammar of school. Erpelding has no
office, and at the center of his work, he believes that learning is critical. His leadership team is
further supported by two assistant principals, known as Design Facilitators.
Stakeholder Group for the Study
While the joint efforts of all stakeholders contribute to the achievement of the overall
organizational goal of integrating design thinking within the TK-8 curriculum, it is important to
understand the promising practices and strategies utilized by the LEDs as they design the
curriculum and procedures that support the integration of design thinking. The choice to call the
educators, LEDs, was intentional as it was important for the educators at Design39 to see
themselves as designers who are engaged in the design thinking process when designing learning
experiences for students. The vision for teaching and learning at Design39 is a novel one, and as
13
a result, implementing it in a strategic and sustainable way depends on the trust, collaboration,
knowledge, skills and mindsets of the LEDs. In addition to design thinking being a process
through which learning takes place, it is a process through which the LEDs design learning
experiences as well. Therefore, the stakeholders of focus for this promising study will be the
LEDs at Design39.
Purpose of the Project and Questions
The purpose of this promising practice study is to better understand how design thinking
can be used as one approach to defining and designing a new grammar of school. An approach
that provides all students with equitable opportunities to develop a mastery of trending skills,
empowering them to innovate, create new products, services and business models as they prepare
to enter the workforce and embrace their responsibility as global citizens. While a complete
study would focus on all stakeholders, for practical purposes, the stakeholder to be focused on in
this analysis are the LEDs at Design39. The analysis will focus on the LEDs’ assets in the areas
of knowledge and skill, motivation, and organizational assets.
1. What are the LEDs’ knowledge and motivation assets related to integrating design
thinking into the curriculum?
2. What is the interaction between the organizational culture and relationships by leadership
on LEDs’ knowledge and motivation?
3. What recommendations in the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational
resources may be appropriate for solving the problem of practice at another organization?
Conceptual and Methodological Framework
Clark and Estes’ (2008) gap analysis, a systematic, analytical method that helps to
understand organizational goal achievement will be adapted to a promising practice study and
14
implemented as the conceptual framework. The methodological framework is a qualitative case
study with descriptive statistics. Assumed LEDs’ knowledge, motivation and organizational
assets will be generated based on personal knowledge and related literature. These assets will be
assessed by using focus group interviews, individual interviews and observations, literature
review and content analysis. Policies, procedures, curriculum and other validated assets will be
provided to allow others to implement these promising practices.
Organization of the Project
Five chapters are used to organize this study. This chapter provided the reader with the
key concepts and terminology commonly found in a discussion about the changing nature of
today’s world and design thinking. The organization’s mission, goals and stakeholders as well as
the initial concepts of gap analysis were introduced. Chapter Two provides a review of current
literature surrounding the scope of the study. Topics of automation, equity, education reform
movements, creativity and design thinking will be addressed. Chapter Three details the assumed
LEDs assets for this study as well as methodology when it comes to choice of participants, data
collection and analysis. In Chapter Four, the data and results are assessed and analyzed. Chapter
Five provides recommendation for practice, based on data and literature as well as
recommendations for an implementation and evaluation plan.

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CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Design thinking is one approach being utilized to help prepare students with the skills and
mindsets to thrive as global citizens, where workplaces expect innovation, creation of new
products and services and new business models. This chapter presents an overview of the
literature examining three core areas – the relationship between industrialization and education
reform; the rise of automation and the digital use divide; and the role design thinking can play in
defining and designing a new grammar of school to eradicate inequities so that all students can
take advantage of the opportunities afforded in today’s world. Following the general literature
review, the Clark and Estes Gap Analysis Conceptual Framework is used to examine the
knowledge, motivation and organizational influences on LEDs at Design39 to integrate design
thinking across the K-8 curriculum.
The History of Industrial Revolutions and Education Reform
Throughout history, economic, political and social forces have collided to shape the
debate and design of the role of schools in a democratic society. In the 1760s, the first industrial
revolution was spurred by the railroads and steam engine, creating the era of mechanical
production (Maynard, 2015). Prior to the mid-1800’s, education was not yet seen as a
responsibility of the government. The role of the government was to protect life and property,
while the parents had the responsibility to teach children how to earn a living and the bible
guiding their roles as individuals giving rise to the one room schoolhouse model (Peterson,
1983). With the establishment of the thirteen colonies and rise of industrialization came the
beginnings of the progressive education movement to apply the promise of American life, the
ideal government of, by and for the people and the beginnings of the public school. Horace
Mann, an early leader in the public-school movement, believed that universal education would
16
serve as the great equalizer, a debate and dream that in the decades that followed would find
people at different ends of the spectrum in how to actualize this vision (Cremin, 1961). As the
19th century came to a close, Americans prided themselves on their public schools believing they
held the promise of equal opportunity for all (Ravitch, 2000).
The late 19th century ushered in the second industrial revolution, an era of mass
production with the creation of electricity, the assembly line and the automobile (Maynard,
2015). Alongside it came the questions of who should be taught, what should be taught and what
are the best methods to teach with (Ravitch, 2000). Furthermore, the lack of a standardized
entrance policy for college created frustration and from there was born a desire for a more
standardized system. The National Education Association sought answers by creating the
Committee of Ten, led by Chairman William Torrey Harris, former superintendent of St. Louis
public schools and Charles W. Eliot, Harvard President. The intentionality behind the goals of
the Committee of Ten are widely debated. Ravitch (2000) highlights that Eliot strongly
contended that the intention of standardizing subjects was to allow every child to have a liberal
education without predetermining their probable path and that school should not be designed
with the incapables in mind. Critics however frowned upon the neglect of manual training and
that the Committee sought to impose a curriculum that did not allow for choices between
different pathways. Whether this outcome was intentional or not is widely debated, however, it is
the work of this Committee that laid the foundation of the traditional public-school system,
outlining subject matter knowledge along with a number of recommended years per subject area
and creating a standardized approach to education that would shape a uniform workforce
powering the era of industrialization (Ravitch, 2000).
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As the movement from apprenticeship to universal schooling began to take shape, the
Committee of Ten was met with challengers. During this time, Lagemann (1989) compares the
competing views of John Dewey and his successor Charles Hubbard Judd at the University of
Chicago that ultimately led to schooling and learning being defined as one in the same. In 1896,
Dewey opened the Laboratory School where the mission was to create a school that could
become a cooperative community while developing in individuals their own capacities and
satisfying their own needs. Furthermore, he imagined a curriculum that would engage students in
real world problems. Judd, on the other hand, believed the primary purpose was obedience to
adults (Lagemann, 1989). With the rise of industrialization in the late 1800’s and a focus on
manual training to prepare students for the workforce, Judd’s views were more widely accepted
and eventually adopted as the grammar of schooling. This led to an education movement that
took shape, creating systems that valued conformity over creativity and rote memorization over
critical thinking, creating a divide between education as a life-long pursuit and schooling, where
students are immersed in traditional classroom environments from ages 5-18/21 (Collins &
Halverson, 2010). With the establishment of the College Board in 1900, the challenge perhaps
lied not in the vision of the report but in its implementation by the public schools as no
differentiation was made between different pathways for students, rather the alignment was more
focused on college admission requirements (Ravitch, 2000). The inequity across the system
since the beginning was evident. While white educators were discussing high school education
and college options, black educators, barely a generation after the abolition of slavery, were
struggling to send their children to elementary schools, dealing with poverty, and a system that
perpetuated their social and political disenfranchisement (Ravitch, 2000).
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The 1950s gave rise to the third industrial revolution, otherwise known as the digital
revolution, with the rise of semiconductors, mainframe computing and later in the century
personal computing and the internet being the most prominent forces of change (Maynard,
2015). The last half of the 20th century marked increasing social upheaval and an uphill battle in
the fight for racial equity in the education systems. One of these battles was Mendez v.
Westminister (1947), a federal case from Orange County, CA challenging segregation of
Mexican American children. This case lay the foundation for the hallmark case, Brown v. Board
of Education, which brought a legal end to segregation (Valencia, 2005). While desegregation
may have won in court, it was never eradicated in practice with the issue shifting the
socialization of inferiority of students of color from being overtly expressed to being covertly
expressed through the criteria like closing the achievement gap and other embedded metrics
beginning with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (Kohli et al., 2017).
United States President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act (ESEA) in 1964 as part of his War on Poverty and to address the achievement gap between
white and black students (Banks, 2015).
With accountability and higher standards now actively being sought, a foundation was in
place for three major education reforms that would soon follow – No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
in 2002 under the Bush and Clinton administrations, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
in 2009 and Race to the Top (RTTP) in 2010 under the Obama administration. Through these
initiatives, federal funds for Title I and the Free and Reduced Lunch program would be
distributed in a way that would force compliance with federal regulations (Dintersmith, 2018).
Throughout the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama era’s, a theme of higher standards and
accountability, equating school success with standardized test scores, continued (Fusarelli &
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Fusarelli, 2015). While NCLB set the stage for an emphasis on test taking, some believe the
RTTP initiative, in particular, created an environment where testing, standards and accountability
served as the primary focus of K-12 education (Fusarelli & Fusarelli, 2015). Race to the Top was
a federal grant program incentivizing schools that implemented the Common Core State
Standards. According to Levy and Murnane (2013), the CCSS represented the best thinking on
literacy and math skills and provided clarity on the foundational skills needed to help students
succeed in a changing world. where educators continued to teach to these tested skills (Fusarelli
& Fusarelli, 2015). In 2015, Every Student Succeeds Act was enacted by Obama, replacing
NCLB in an effort to shift control over school performance back to the states, encouraging a
move away from standardization and measurement of school success based on standardized test
scores (Dintersmith, 2018). Despite a change in name and increased autonomy at the local level,
the reform did not remove the requirement for standardized testing benchmarks but allowed for
modifications and exploration of new assessment options.
In 2016, the President of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, introduced a new
term for “the changing world” referenced by Levy and Murnane – the Fourth Industrial
Revolution. The Fourth Industrial Revolution was unique in its scale and speed, merging the
unification of the natural, social and artificial science worlds, challenging the way humans live,
work and communicate (Schwab, 2016). The purpose behind this term was to explain why the
expectations of employers has changed and to stress a sense of urgency in transforming current
systems so that people could take advantage of the opportunities automation offered. A key
finding in The Future of Jobs (World Economic Forum, 2018) report found that if the response to
the rapid transformations unfolding across societies were proactively addressed, they could lead
to an increase in jobs and quality of life. On the other hand, the report notes that a failure to do
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so could lead to greater inequity and a widening skills gap. Despite the CCSS’s emphasis on the
skills of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and communication, the state exams
continued to focus on testing, standards and accountability of “declining” skills that created an
environment perpetuating standardization where educators continued to teach to the test
(Fusarelli & Fusarelli, 2015).
Schwab (2016) argues that the scale and scope of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is
more profound where a range of new technologies are, “fusing the physical, digital and
biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries” (2016. p.7). Maynard
(2015) elaborates further on the implications for society in The Fourth Industrial Revolution,
stating that humanity is at the intersection of social good and social harm. Rifkin (2013) further
highlights how during this time the internet has allowed objects to speak to one another, with
mobile devices that connect people worldwide, artificial intelligence, the internet of things,
autonomous vehicles and other examples of changing forever people’s lives. Coleman (2016)
says that while the Fourth Industrial Revolution is in its early stages, it is no longer simply a
theory as it has already impacted businesses and societies through robotics and intelligent
sensors moving from 4.9 billion devices connected in 2016 to a predicted 25 billion in 2020.
Schwab (2016) stresses that the pace at which the scale and scope of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, characterized by the age of automation, is occurring requires an urgency in
transforming educational systems that provide students the knowledge, skills and mindsets
needed to not just survive but thrive in this new age with the skills outlined in the Future of Jobs
report.
Whereas previous industrial revolutions had the luxury of time to develop new training
models to prepare people with the adequate skills needed, the scale and scope of The Fourth
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Industrial Revolution currently underway is witnessing a time of unprecedented access to
information, often termed the knowledge economy. With the rise of the World Wide Web,
access to information paired with the advances in technology require an urgency in transforming
educational systems that provide students the knowledge, skills and mindsets needed to thrive in
the future workplaces and as global citizens (World Economic Forum, 2016). The Future of Jobs
report highlights that by 2020, there will be a net employment impact of 5.1 million jobs lost to
disruptive labor market changes with a total job loss of 7.1 million jobs globally, two-thirds of
which are routine and manual tasks. As computers become more advanced in the types of tasks
they can do, the skills that students need will continue to evolve. A great challenge facing
societies is creating opportunities for all people to understand the skills and mindsets needed to
benefit from automation technologies so that they do not have to face the disadvantages of
unemployment and greater inequity (Makridakis, 2017).
Automation and Augmentation: The Changing Demand for Skills
A decade ago, some of the most in-demand occupations or specialties today did not exist
across many industries and countries. Furthermore, 60% of children in kindergarten will live in
a world where the possible opportunities do not yet exist (World Economic Forum, 2017). In
Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work (2017), McKinsey states that 60% of all occupations
have at least 30% of activities that can be automated, 40% of employers say lack of skills is the
main reason for entry level job vacancies and 60% of new graduates said they were not prepared
for the world of work in a knowledge economy, noting gaps in technical and soft skills.
Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) argue that in the age of automation, as computers
become more advanced in the types of tasks they can do, the skills that students need will
continue to evolve. They identify two foundational skills students need to be successful in the
22
age of automation – solving-ill structured problems and complex communication (Figure 1). Ill
structured problems are those that have no answer and require designing new ideas (Autor et al.,
2003). Complex communication covers a broad range of skills needed when engaging in social
interactions with other people.
Figure 1
U.S. Job Skill Demand, 1969-1999

To gain an understanding of how people can benefit from automation, tasks that can be
complemented by computers and tasks that can be replaced must be identified. Autor et al.
(2003) describe the five broad types of traditional workplace tasks:
1. Routine manual tasks
2. Routine cognitive tasks
3. Non-routine manual tasks
4. Working with new information
5. Solving unstructured problems
As shown in Figure 2, the first three have been declining since 1970, whereas working with new
information and solving unstructured problems have been increasing.

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Figure 2
Changing Work Tasks in U.S. Economy

Frey and Osborne (2017) note a study conducted by McKinsey Global Institute in 2013
stating that algorithms could substitute for 140 million full time knowledge workers worldwide.
Frey & Osborne present a new model that builds on the work of Levy and Murnane and
breakdown solving ill structured problems by being able to carry out the following tasks:
• perception and manipulation tasks
• creative intelligence tasks
• social intelligence tasks
Robots are still unable, the authors say, to match the depth of human perception and
manipulation. Tasks that take place in unstructured work environments or objects that require
responses based on feedback such as the touch of a doctor while examining a patient require
humans. In the age of automation, making sense of information and creating value out of it
requires creativity (Autor et al., 2003; Frey & Osborne, 2017). Creativity is the ability to come
up with ideas that are novel and effective (Boden, 2003). In 2014, Wagner and Compton
summarized this challenge as, “Today’s world doesn’t care about what you know, it cares about
what you can do with what you know.” Wagner and Compton (2014) highlight the seven
survival skills they believe children must enhance and develop to thrive in the age of automation.
24
These skills include critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks and
leading by influence, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurship, effective oral and
written communication, accessing and analyzing information and curiosity and imagination. The
most recent examination of skills is outlined in The Future of Jobs (World Economic Forum,
2018) report comparing skills in 2018 to those needed in 2022, noting trending skills as
analytical thinking and innovation, active learning, creativity, design, programming, complex
problem solving, leadership and social influence and emotional intelligence amongst others (see
Table 1).
While many educators, parents and employers agree that the trending skills identified are
critical skills, the grammar of schooling has remained in its traditional mold for decades with
pockets of progressive education models unable to scale (Tyack & Tobin, 1994). With the scale
and speed of the Fourth Industrial Revolution challenging the way humans live, work and
communicate, it is critical that education systems change the grammar of schooling, preparing
students for the jobs of the future, and providing them with the knowledge, skills and mindsets
needed to thrive in a world where tasks are increasingly being automated by technology. The two
areas identified by Levy and Murnane – solving unstructured problems and complex
communication – can be enhanced and developed by mastering the trending skills identified by
The Future of Jobs (World Economic Forum, 2018) report when engaging in the design thinking
process, empowering students with a skill set and mindset to thrive in future workplaces and as
global citizens.

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Design Thinking: An Approach to K12 Curriculum
Origins of Design Thinking
Buckminster Fuller, who brought together design teams at MIT, called the 1960s the
decade that marked the design revolution, bringing to the forefront a field that would merge
science, technology and rationalism to address the complex human and environmental problems
(Cross, 2001). The United States was not alone in advocating for the use of design to solve
challenges in society. In Scandinavia, cooperative design was being used amongst everyone from
experts to workers to solve the challenges brought forth by industrialization (Manzini &
François, 2003). In 1973, when Rittel and Webber published, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of
Planning,” they introduced the term, “wicked problem.” Buchanan (1992) elaborated on the idea
of a wicked problem and its relationship to design, establishing design as a way of thinking
where the designer uses “placements,” tools that shape a design situation starting with
empathizing with the users, understanding the pain points, and creating a hypothesis that the
designer can explore and develop.
Over the last century, design thinking has evolved through a quest to move away from
siloed subject matter areas created by the Committee of Ten, to more integrative disciplines to
complement the arts and sciences to solve real world problems (Buchanan, 1992). Dewey (1929)
elaborated on the shift toward integrative disciplines in, “The Quest for Certainty,” exploring the
relationship between science, art and practice. Dewey proposed that art and science be seen as
complementary, defining the intersection of the two – technology. Technology for Dewey meant
the art of experimental thinking. Products he said were the culminating artifact, and the
technology lied in the experimental thinking, design and art that could provide the foundation for
creating other new products.
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In, “Sciences of the Artificial,” Herbert Simon further elaborated on Dewey’s ideas and
saw the value in utilizing design to create something new. He created a differentiation between
creating new artifacts and creating artifacts dealing with existing reality (1968). He believed
passionately that this was critical for every individual, not just the few, “The proper study of
mankind is the science of design, not only as the professional component of a technical education
but as a core discipline for every liberally educated man” (p.83). Simon identified three
limitations when exploring the existing and desired state of a challenge that the education system
is familiar with: the cognitive limitation of our mind, the time available to make a decision and
the complex nature of the challenge at hand (Cross, 2001).
A few years later in, “A Reflective Practitioner,” Schön (1982), an avid critic of Simon,
wrote about how researchers and practitioners should explore ideas at the intersection of
technical knowledge and artistry. He posed that the role of a designer is one who engaged in the
relationship between creation and reflection to iterate and improve upon one’s work. The
founding of IDEO in 1991 would solidify the vision of Simon and Schon into a business model
and serve as yet another defining moment in time when design thinking would begin to become
popularized, with many other industries taking notice of how this process could be applied to
help them innovate and generate new ideas (www.ideo.com). CEO Tim Brown divided the
design thinking process IDEO used into three stages, “inspiration – ideation - implementation,”
sharing stories and processes so that everyone could unleash their creativity and apply IDEO’s
method to the work they were doing, with a focus on entrepreneurs and social innovators (Brown
& Wyatt, 2010.) IDEO launched the d.School at Stanford who introduced the design thinking
method to education organizations.

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The Skills of a Design Thinker
The design thinking model is nonlinear, resulting in a back and forth between the stages
of inspiration, ideation and implementation, in an effort to continuously improve upon their
solutions (Shively et al., 2018). These stages were expanded by the d.School into empathy,
define, ideate, prototype and iterate (d.School, 2019).
During the empathy stage, you observe, engage and immerse yourself in the experience
of those you are designing for, continuously asking, “why” to understand why things are the way
they are. During the define stage you unpack the empathy findings and create an actionable
problem statement often times starting with, “how might we…” This statement not only
emphasizes an optimistic outlook, it invites the designer to think about how this can be a
collaborative approach. During the ideate phase you generate a series of possibilities for design.
The focus here is quantity not quality, as you want to generate as many possibilities to see how
they may merge together. Feasibility is not important at this step, rather the key is to not think
about what is possible but what can be possible. At the end, one of the ideas, or the merging of
many ideas, is chosen to expand upon in the next phase. During the prototype phase, ideas that
were narrowed down from ideation are created in a tangible form so that they can be tested.
During this phase, the designer has an opportunity to test their prototype and gain feedback. By
quickly testing the prototype, the user can refine the idea and has a deeper understanding to go
back and ask questions to the group they are designing for. The feedback received from the user
allows the designer to engage in a deeper level of empathy, refining the questions being asked
and the problem being defined (d.School, 2019).
This nonlinear and recursive process differs from other problem-solving approaches
because it begins with empathy and understanding the systems and users at the beginning of the
28
process by moving through three phases - inspiration, ideation and implementation. Using the
empathy lens allows for emphasized “problem finding” as a significant differentiator when
engaging in tasks from a design perspective vs being “solution focused” (Cross, 1995).
Furthermore, empathy allows students to think outside of themselves and gain a broader world
perspective, considering all of the people involved. Emphasis is on finding solutions not being
overwhelmed by roadblocks (Shively, Stith & Rubenstein, 2018).
Often times problems are addressed with a solution in mind (Chin et al., 2019). Design
thinking addresses problems from a beginner’s mind guiding the user through a series of stages
to identify gaps that need to be addressed, empowering users to be problem solvers and problem
finders. Furthermore, design thinking prepares students with the skills and mindsets to
complement their knowledge needed to thrive in The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Design
thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, recognize patterns, construct ideas that have
emotional meaning and express ourselves in media other than words and symbols. Design
thinking provides not only a set of problem-solving skills, but also nurtures the mindset required
to identify problems and see the process through from inspiration to ideation to implementation
(Brown & Wyatt, 2010).
The Mindset of a Design Thinker
When solving unstructured problems and working with new information, knowledge and
skills alone are not always enough to thrive in The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Children must
be able to be nimble and agile and have a mindset that allows them to deal with rapid changes.
IDEO (2019) highlight the seven mindsets that you enhance and develop over time as you
engage in the design thinking process.
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1. Learn from Failure - By engaging in rapid prototyping we do not spend too much
time on any one idea, rather we continue to learn from failure and iterate upon our
ideas.
2. Making - Making allows the student to have a bias toward action, seeing their ideas
come to life.
3. Creative Confidence - Through developing creative confidence, the traditional
definitions of creativity as being a great artist are challenged by believing that your
ideas can bring about a positive change and that you have the skills to see your idea
through.
4. Empathy - We cannot create sustainable solutions if we do not reach outside
ourselves, by engaging in empathy what we think is often challenged by what we
learn.
5. Comfort with Ambiguity - Today’s world requires us to be comfortable with
ambiguity, we may not always know what the answer is, but we must give ourselves
the permission to explore.
6. Optimism - Optimism is the one thing that continues to drive you forward, it is easy
to become overwhelmed by challenges today’s however when we begin with
optimism, we realize that we can bring about a positive effect.
7. Iteration – By engaging in iteration we are able to embrace the idea that your first try
is not your last try.
The Value of Design Thinking in Schools
Design thinking, with origins outside of education, is one approach to gaining mastery
with solving unstructured problems and complex communication. It is increasingly being applied
30
in K-12 education settings, to allow students to build the knowledge, skills and mindsets needed
to thrive in today’s world (Chin et al., 2019). As schools strive to prepare students for their
future, design thinking can play a critical role in complementing students’ knowledge with the
skills and mindsets to solve unstructured problems and work with new information.
While new approaches tend to be viewed with skepticism, an increasing number of
studies are coming forward reflecting the promise of transferability of skills and mindsets from
the classroom to the real world when utilizing design thinking. As expectations are raised about
what student skills and mindsets are needed, the level of support must increase as well to
experience success in new strategies and the outcomes they promise. Razzouk and Shute (2012)
highlight core elements that must be in place – sufficient practice, scaffolded support and
formative feedback. As students’ design thinking skills continue to be enhanced and developed,
they can apply these strategies to be problem finders and problem solvers, helping them be more
comfortable with change and empowering them to solve unstructured problems and work with
new information, gaining knowledge, skills and mindsets that cannot be found in the confines of
a textbook.
These ideas were further reinforced in a recent study by the Stanford Graduate School of
Education that highlights that through instruction, students transfer design thinking strategies
beyond the classroom and that the biggest benefits were to low-achieving students (Chin et al.,
2019). The study included 200 students from grade 6. The researchers worked with the
educators during class time to coach half the group of students on two specific design thinking
strategies and then assigned them a project where they could apply these skills. The two
strategies included seeking out constructive feedback and identifying multiple possible outcomes
to a challenge. Each of these strategies were designed to prevent what the researchers called,
31
“early closure,” identifying the solution before examining the problem. After class the students
were presented with different challenges to see how they would approach them. The students
who were taught about constructive criticism asked for feedback when presented with the new
challenge and were more likely to go back and revise their work. This area was significant, as a
pre-test revealed that low-achieving students were behind their high achieving peers when
seeking out feedback, a gap that the researchers say disappeared after classroom instruction,
highlighting the need for this to be taught to all students, not just advanced students in electives.
The last area of this study is significant because design thinking is often found in pockets,
presented to students already interested in this area, or the students who are in certain electives.
Another study (Caroll et al., 2010) focused on the implementation of a design curriculum
during a middle school geography class and explored how students expressed their understanding
of design thinking in classroom activities, how affective elements impacted design thinking in
the classroom environment and how design thinking is connected to academic standards and
content learning in the classroom. The students were a diverse group with 60% Latino, 30%
African-American, 9% Pacific Islander and 1% White. The task was for students to use the
design process to learn about systems in geography. The study found that students increased their
levels of creative confidence and that design thinking fostered the ability to imagine without
boundaries and constraints. A key element to success was that educators needed to see the value
of design thinking and it must be integrated into academic content (Caroll et al., 2010).
In another example Future Designers, an extracurricular course for students ages 10-15,
introduced students to creativity and design thinking. The main goals are to initiate children to a
way of thinking to solve everyday problems, improve future employment prospects, boost self-
confidence and help children discover their ability to imagine and create. Students go through
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four challenges in the course, two are individual and two are team based. The data collected in a
study of this course led by Future Designers demonstrated an increase in personal and social
creativity and innovation and inspired a positive attitude towards design (Grammenos & Antona,
2017).
Design thinking is an approach to learning that could effectively prepare all students with
the skills and mindsets needed to thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. While
problem solving and communication skills are recognized by educators as essential, designing
and implementing methods to develop them in our systems of education will involve new forms
of assessment, changing the tasks students do, and preparing educators and others to lead new
models of learning. If today’s youth are to take advantage of the opportunities brought forth by
automation, skill development needs to be in place and the consequences of not solving the
problem will lead to increased inequality across and within societies (Barton et al., 2013).
Creating Equitable Environments: Bridging the Digital Use Divide with Design Thinking
The Equity Challenge: A New Digital Divide
In Education to Employment: Designing a System that Works (2013), the report shares
that there are currently two global crises – high levels of youth unemployment and a shortage of
people with critical job skills. Furthermore, the report highlights a critical communication gap
between employers and education providers. While fewer than half of the youth and employers
surveyed believed that new graduates were prepared for entry-level positions, 72% of educators
believed that graduates were adequately prepared. Four years later, McKinsey Global Institute
(2017) found that almost 40% of employers report that lack of skills is the main reason for entry
level vacancies in the United States. Six years later, in 2019, the same challenge remains.
According to PwC’s 2019 annual CEO survey, 79% of U.S. CEOs are concerned that a shortage
33
of people with key skills could impair their company’s growth. These reports share a common
theme – the demands of the workplace are changing, and education systems are not preparing
students with the necessary skills that employers expect.
From government incentives to businesses who donate computers, policy makers have
attempted to prepare students for the future by providing them with access to technology. Under
the Reagan administration when the United States published, “A Nation at Risk,” there was
growing concern over a digital divide (1983). However, researchers have come to learn that
simply placing technology in the hands of students does not increase their problem solving and
communication skills (Attewell, 2001). Data collected from the NAEP demonstrates that, rather,
the challenge lies in changing the tasks that students do when provided with technology to
prepare them with the skills needed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, presenting the challenge
not of a digital divide, but what Attewell refers to as a digital use divide.
Attewell (2001) further points out that the students who gain the types of skills
highlighted by the Future of Jobs Report and Levy and Murnane (2013) such as - solving
unstructured problems, complex communication, creativity, emotional intelligence and more -
are white and affluent students. These students are more likely to use technology to develop
trending skills with greater levels of adult support, whereas minority students are more likely to
use it for rote learning tasks, with lower levels of adult support. Furthermore, Attewell (2001)
proposes that when access to technology is no longer a challenge, advantaged students are more
likely to use technology for solving ill structured problems and engaging in creative tasks,
whereas disadvantaged students use technology for drill and kill exercises that reinforce rote
memorization. Peters (2017) highlights that the digital revolution alone will not transform
education, rather educational systems must reexamine their role in today’s world. The
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discrepancies in how technology is being used to enhance instruction leads to a widening divide
in skills that are acquired, presenting not only a workforce challenge but an equity challenge.
Placing technology in the hands of students to enhance creativity and problem-solving skills is
not always successful if the tasks that students do are not redesigned (Attewell, 2001). By
redesigning the tasks, schools are in a better position to use the technology for higher level tasks.
It is here in the redesign of tasks and examining the role of school in today’s world that design
thinking can play a transformative role, providing the strategies and tools to define and design a
new grammar of school.
In the 2016 National Education Technology Plan, the U.S. Department of Education
(2016) formally recognized a digital use divide between learners, a distinction not made in
earlier iterations of the plan. This distinction was drawn between those who are using technology
in active and creative ways to support their learning and those who are using it for passive
content consumption:
A digital use divide separates many students who use technology in ways that transform
their learning from those who use the tools to complete the same activities but now with
an electronic device (e.g., digital worksheets, online multiple-choice tests). The digital
use divide is present in both formal and informal learning settings and across high and
low-poverty schools and communities. (p. 5)
As Kohn (2011) highlights a comment by Stipek, where the former dean of Stanford’s
School of Education shared drill and kill instruction isn’t how middle-class children got their
edge, so “why use a strategy to help poor kids catch up that didn’t help middle class kids in the
first place.”
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Studies from the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) in the 1990’s
found that minority and urban students used computers on a more frequent basis when compared
to their more affluent and suburban peers, however the way in which they were used differed.
While access is an important starting point, how the devices are used once students have access
is what differentiates the level of success that can be achieved once integrated (Warschauer &
Matuchniak, 2010). Studies show that affluent and suburban students are more likely to use
technology for creativity and problem solving with greater levels of adult support when
compared to their minority and urban peers (Attewell, 2001 & Warschauer Matuchniak, 2010;
Hohlfeld et al., 2016). The recent legislation, Enhancing Education Through Technology
(EETT) Act of 2001 and the 2018 National Education Technology Plan attempt to address the
digital use divide highlighted by Attewell (2001) and Kohn (2011) by stating, “To assist every
student in crossing the digital divide by ensuring that every student is technologically literate by
the time the student finishes the eighth grade, regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender,
family income, geographic location, or disability.”
In The Second Machine Age, Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014, p. 11) describe how the
fast pace of change brings increased opportunities to do work that is more meaningful, leading to
a greater quality of life. However, they also address how a lack of skills can potentially lead to
increased inequality and describe why developing skills to complement automation is critical:
Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of
people, as it races ahead. As we’ll demonstrate, there’s never been a better time to be a
worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology
to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker
36
with only “ordinary” skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other
digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.
Design thinking strengthens the mindset and skill that today’s world demands with the ability to
solve unstructured problems and develop enhanced complex communication skills. Through
nurturing the skillsets and mindsets developed through engaging in design thinking, schools can
create more equitable use environments for all learners that leverage technology to engage in
creative tasks that can bridge the digital use divide.
Role of Educators in Using Design Thinking to Bridge the Digital Use Divide
Educators are facing a number of challenges in their professional practice. Many of the
requirements today are tools and methods they did not grow up with. Furthermore, the profession
is tasked with designing new methods often within traditional systems that have constraints that
may serve as roadblocks to change (Robinson & Aronica, 2016). Fisher (2006) emphasizes that
when examining how to design new learning experiences, it is the teacher, not the technology,
that must take the lead to create truly transformational environments. To empower educators as
agents of change, there are four variables that must be accounted for when changing the mindset
from technology being a supplemental tool to an essential tool when teaching trending skills
(Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). These four variables are – knowledge, self-efficacy,
pedagogical beliefs and subject and school culture, each requiring that the necessary time be
given to educators to develop in these areas so that they are able to make the desired changes.
Design thinking provides an opportunity to not only explore problems of practice in education
but an opportunity to design curriculum, enhanced through the use of technology and other
available tools and pedagogical practices.
37
Technology can play a powerful role in creating environments that nurture creativity and
problem solving in addition to the four variables outlined by Ertner and Ottenbreit-Leftwich
(2010). However, educators are often not prepared to integrate it authentically with content and
pedagogy (Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya, 2007). By placing educators in design teams, they can
engage in a design challenge of technology integration in pedagogy. A 2018 study by PwC with
the Business Higher Education Forum shared that an average of 10% of K-12 teachers feel
confident incorporating higher-level technology, that affords students the opportunity to use
technology for active learning vs passive learning. As a result, students do not spend much time
in school actively practicing the higher-level trending skills expected by employers, with the
report sharing that more than 60% of classroom technology use is passive, while only 32% is
active use. While the study suggests that many teachers do not having the skills to engage
students in the active use of technology, 79% said they would like to have more professional
development for how to leverage technology for active learning.
When educators’ explorations of technology are tied to solving educational problems,
they can learn “how to learn” and “how to think” about the tools available to them. Balancing a
need for teaching new skills within a traditional system proves to be a challenging problem of
practice for educators. By viewing it through the lens of a design challenge, they can learn
design thinking and gain mastery of trending skills, providing them with the skillset and mindset
needed to create new and relevant learning experiences in their classrooms.
In “Understanding by Design,” Wiggins and McTighe (1998) provide educators with a
framework to design curriculum known as backwards design. When learning, the authors say
that unlike Bloom’s taxonomy where learning takes place in a sequential manner, explanation,
interpretation, application, perspective, empathy and self-knowledge can occur during any state
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of the process. In stage one, educators design essential questions that will guide the learning. In
stage two, the authors suggest that before activities are created, thought to what will count as
evidence of successful learning – assessment, should be determined first. In the third and final
stage, educators design the learning experiences, reflecting on the need’s students have when it
comes to knowledge, cognitive schemata and resources to achieve the learning goals.
Role of Assessment: Assessing the Process not the Product
While many agree on the skills needed to prepare students, systems of assessment must
also undergo extensive reform as what we assess is not always what we value. Assessment in its
true form comes from the Latin root word assidere, which means to sit beside (Stefanakis, 2002).
If the origins of the word are considered, assessment is guiding learning, side-by-side with the
learner assessing the journey of growth. Skills such as creativity and critical thinking are not
always measurable using a standardized test. Creating a culture where assessment is not viewed
from the lens of standardized testing can help shift the conversation from a focus on the
“achievement gap” to a focus on learners as individuals through performance-based assessments.
The achievement gap declares Ladson-Billings (2006) is the inability to confront the root
causes from the historical, economic, social, and political policies that exist within the system
that diminish opportunities for students of color. From reading and math scores, dropout rates,
enrollment in gifted programs to college admission and graduation rates, the widening
achievement gap ignores the systemic practices that offer short term solutions (Ladson-Billings,
2016). This narrative perpetuates a culture of blame, where parents of students of color are told
the need to do more to support the academic development of their children (Brown & Brown,
2012).
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However, as Attewell (2001) emphasized the discrepancy between tasks is the core issue
that needs to be reexamined. As the skills students need continue to change, so must the tasks
and as a result so must the way in which those tasks are assessed (Shively, Stith & Rubenstein,
2018). Design Thinking can be used as a tool to empathize with learners unique needs,
motivations and goals to design personalized learning experiences where the educator can assess
the process and the product, providing students with an opportunity to enhance their creative and
critical thinking skills and reflect on their growth (Shively et al., 2018).
Multiple choice exams often emphasize what is easy to assess not what is important.
Rubrics, on the other hand provide an opportunity for creativity and critical thinking to be
examined, along with many other skills and have been created and used to guide the students
during their task. Rubrics also provide an opportunity for students to self-assess. Feedback on the
process instead of the product alone helps students develop self-regulation and meta cognitive
thinking abilities (Ritchhart & Perkins, 2008; Shively et al., 2018). Positive verbal
reinforcements are also shown to increase intrinsic motivation (Deci, 1972). In a world that is
constantly changing, being able to take skills such as critical thinking and creativity and apply
them to new scenarios is critical. Intrinsic motivation allows a student to merge skill and will,
moving beyond simply knowing a skill and being able to apply it to choosing to use it in
different scenarios (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). The dynamic between skill and will is important
to understand when thinking about assessment because as Rueda (2011) explains, just because
someone knows how to do something, does not mean they want to do it or will do it.
Following this review of the literature on the rise of the age of automation, the role
design thinking can play in preparing students with trending skills, and how to create equitable
environments so that all students can take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the Fourth
40
Industrial Revolution, the next section turns to Design39 to better understand the LED’s
knowledge, motivation, and organizational assets that may be contributing to their effective
implementation of a Design Thinking model of instruction to define and design a new grammar
of school.
LEDs Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Assets
When diagnosing performance gaps, Clark and Estes (2008) list three important factors
that must be examined, including peoples’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences
on performance. Clark and Estes (2008) define knowledge gaps as determining whether people
know how, what, when, why, where and who when accomplishing tasks; motivation gaps
involve the internal process of choosing, persisting and investing mental efforts to accomplishing
a goal; and organizational barriers are the organizational processes or resources that act against
accomplishing your goals. Despite increases in professional development and increased access
to technology resources, educators often find the process of adapting learning experiences
challenging as a result of organizational barriers such as culture, beliefs about teaching and
openness to change (Keengwe, Onchwari & Wachira, 2008). This section discusses knowledge,
motivation and organizational assets that enhance and develop learning experience designer’s
ability to integrate design thinking into the K-8 curriculum to prepare students with the skills and
mindsets to thrive.
Knowledge and Skills
In order to explore individuals’ capacity to perform their roles, it is important to identify
the knowledge and skills that the individual possesses, and those that are needed, so that issues of
learning and knowledge gaps related to what people need in order to function effectively can be
identified (Rueda, 2011). Knowledge, according to Krathwohl (2002), is domain specific and
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contextualized and social experiences play a role in how knowledge is acquired and transferred.
This dissertation derives knowledge influences of the LED’s ability to integrate design thinking
into the K-8 curriculum which reflects a key competency that this study seeks to explore. Rueda
(2011) points out that learners should understand not only “what” and “how” but also “why.” If
what it is that needs to be learned is not identified clearly for the learner, it will be difficult for
them to achieve their goals (Rueda, 2011). If the goal is for people to develop certain types of
skills to carry out their tasks more effectively, it is important to understand if learning has taken
place successfully for them to transfer the knowledge they have learned to different scenarios
that they may encounter. Mayer (2005) notes that there are three attributes that can help
determine whether learning has taken place: a change in the learner, what is changed is the
learner’s knowledge and the cause of change is the learner’s experience.
To effectively measure whether learning has taken place, it is important to identify what
knowledge one currently has and whether additional knowledge is needed. In order to explore
key stakeholder group’s knowledge in a comprehensive manner in this study, Krathwohl’s
(2002) framework was utilized. Krathwohl categorized knowledge into four different categories:
factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive (Krathwohl, 2002). Factual knowledge refers
to fact-based knowledge, for example, understanding terms and details to solve a
problem. Conceptual knowledge is understanding the different categories or classifications
within a certain discipline. Procedural knowledge refers to the knowledge and skills to carry out
the specific task. The fourth type of knowledge is metacognition, an awareness of one’s own
learning and thinking. These four types of knowledge have been further categorized into
cognitive processes and how they would be applied when remembering, understanding, applying,
analyzing, evaluating and creating (Rueda, 2011). The different categories and processes are
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important to consider because an individual may have the knowledge of the facts but not
necessarily understand how to apply it. Furthermore, it is essential that individuals engage in
metacognitive practice so that they can be aware of how they are applying their knowledge and
whether their application is optimal or needs to be adjusted.
Since 2014, the goal of Design39 has been that it will create learning experiences that are
designed with the learners in mind to empower them with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to
thrive. To examine how the LEDs at Design39 have integrated design thinking across their core
curriculum for grades TK-8, the study explored three knowledge influences.
Knowledge of the design thinking process. According to the knowledge types,
conceptual knowledge refers to the LED’s familiarity with the terminology of the design
thinking process. Understanding the different stages of the process, empathy, defining a problem,
ideating, prototyping and iterating (Brown, 2011) is essential to planning a curriculum that aligns
with the process. Being able to identify both the terminology of the design thinking process and
the concept of it as a whole allows the teacher to optimize where the steps fit in the curriculum
lesson they are teaching.
Knowledge of how to create design thinking experiences for all learners. In “Creating
Innovators,” Wagner and Compton (2012) explore the role of knowledge and application,
“Today’s world does not care about what you know, it cares about what you can do with what
you know.” Design thinking is a process that aims to help students develop the skills valued by
the workforce of today identified by the future of jobs report as trending skills (World Economic
Forum, 2018). When engaging in design thinking challenges, students experience how to
approach a problem using the following steps - empathy, defining a problem, ideating,
prototyping and iterating (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). It is not essential that all these steps be
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included in every lesson. Alongside this process, there are mindsets that design thinking aims to
nurture. These mindsets are optimism, making, iterating, comfort with ambiguity and learning
from failure (IDEO, 2019). Knowing these from a factual perspective and being able to apply
them are quite different.
Knowledge of how to turn traditional standards-based curriculum into design challenges
that are interdisciplinary requires collaboration and preparation with other LEDs. At Design39,
the LEDs meet together for an hour each morning to iterate and design learning experiences for
their students, each using their unique set of knowledge and skills. Through this process, the
LEDs are not only sharing their knowledge to explore ways to have their students engage in
creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and communication, but are engaging in these
procedural knowledge activities as well as they prepare the lessons themselves. Borko and
Putnam (1995) share that how educators think is related to their knowledge and to understand
how LEDs are using design thinking to teach the standards-based curriculum, it is important to
understand their knowledge systems.
Knowledge of how to reflect on their effectiveness in integrating design thinking into
the curriculum. To maximize their effectiveness at integrating design thinking into the
curriculum, LEDs will benefit from engaging in metacognitive practices that will allow them to
enhance and develop their teaching craft. Design39’s LEDs work together in grade level teams
that collaborate for one hour every morning, bringing together a diverse set of
skillsets. Engaging in reflective practice will help the LEDs become more self-aware of the
strengths and challenges which allows collaboration with other members of their grade level
team to be more successful. Krathwohl (2002) highlights the importance of skills such as self-
reflection and self-regulation as a means of being able to control and think about how learning is
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taking place for you. Not practicing daily self-reflection may decrease the meaningfulness of the
collaboration time educators have together daily. Since the lessons are designed to be
interdisciplinary and require daily iteration, not practicing self-reflection could have adverse
effects on student mastery of content and development of skills. Table 4 presents the assumed
knowledge assets of LEDs and the knowledge type.
Table 4
Assumed Knowledge Assets
Assumed Knowledge Assets Knowledge Type
Knowledge of the design thinking process Declarative

Knowledge of how to integrate design thinking into the curriculum. Procedural

Knowledge of how to reflect on their effectiveness in integrating
design thinking into the curriculum.
Metacognitive

Motivation
Knowledge does not always function independently. In addition to knowledge
influences, there are motivation influences that play a role in the achievement success of the
LEDs. Motivation is defined as, “a process where goal directed activity is instigated and
sustained” (Rueda, 2011, p.38). Motivation can be observed through identified motivated
behaviors that serve as the underlying causes for active choice, persistence, mental effort.
When examining an individual’s motivation, these three elements are critical. Active
choice determines whether one decides to choose one task over another, persistence determines
one’s commitment to the task in the face of other distractions and effort determines the desire to
exert the mental effort needed to continue learning (Rueda, 2011). In this context, three
motivational influences were explored – utility value, self-efficacy and goal orientation.
Understanding the motivational influences is critical when identifying how to support teacher
capacity to utilize design thinking as a framework for implementing the standards-based
45
curriculum. As Rueda (2011) points out, consideration is rarely given to the possibility that
individuals have the knowledge of what is required but do not have the motivation to carry out
the tasks.
LED ’s utility value for teaching design thinking. The degree to which there is value in
carrying out a task in accordance with the identified goals is known as utility value (Eccles,
2010). The greater the value placed on the activity, the higher the likelihood that individuals will
choose to engage in behaviors as well as persist at them and invest the necessary mental effort to
succeed. In this case, the LEDs need to see the value in integrating the design thinking process in
the curriculum to empower students with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive. These
types of learning environments bridge the digital use divide and provide students with the
opportunity to enhance and develop trending skills and mindsets. This belief will enable them to
optimize their motivation as educators and instructional leaders.
LED ’s self-efficacy about teaching design thinking. The belief about how effective an
educator will be at performing a task is known as self-efficacy. In the case of the LEDs, they
need to believe not only that integrating the design thinking process is valuable to prepare
students for their world, but that they are highly capable of effectively integrating the design
thinking process into the curriculum alongside traditional method. The LEDs are engaging in a
new way of designing curriculum that often includes confronting challenges while engaging in
the task. For example, when designing instruction, they may be used to working alone, however,
to create interdisciplinary units of study they will have to come together with their peers to
collaborate. Here they may encounter their weaknesses, methods they are not familiar with. On
the other hand, there are opportunities to identify areas of strength that they can contribute to the
lesson design. It is here that their self-efficacy, their perception of the degree to which they will
46
be successful, will make a difference in ensuring that they persist at the task. It is critical to
continue to see educators as learners, affording them the same opportunities for engagement,
feedback and reflection so that they can continue to experience success and maintain high levels
of self-efficacy.
LED ’s mastery orientation about teaching design thinking. Goals and motivation are
intertwined, goals impact motivation and our motivation influence how we continue to choose,
persist and exert effort towards a goal, placing emphasis on the purpose and reasons for wanting
to achieve a task (Rueda, 2011). In this context, the LEDs are assumed to want to do more than
teach the bare minimum curriculum and want to collaborate with other educators to engage in
continuous improvement of their ability to integrate design thinking into the curriculum to
prepare students with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive.
Goal orientation is divided into two areas: mastery orientation and performance
orientation. Mastery orientation towards a task allows one to continually take on a challenge
while learning a new competence, whereas performance orientation, on the other hand, has an
emphasis on demonstrating a competency for the sake of others. Whether an individual endorses
a mastery, or a performance orientation, impacts one’s engagement and achievement (Rueda,
2011). Maintaining a mastery orientation will be important to creating and maintaining an
environment where the LEDs will continue to learn and understand how to integrate design
thinking and continue to enhance and develop their skill set. Table 5 presents the motivation
constructs and the assumed motivation assets on LEDs’ performance.

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Table 5
Assumed Motivation Assets
Motivation Construct Assumed Motivation Assets
Utility Value
LEDs see the value in integrating the design thinking
process in the curriculum to empower students with the
knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive in their world.
Self-Efficacy
LEDs believe they are capable of effectively integrating the
design thinking process into the curriculum alongside
traditional methods.

Goal Orientation
LEDs want to collaborate with other LEDs to engage in
continuous improvement of their ability to integrate design
thinking into the curriculum.

Organizational Influences
Organizational influences, in addition to knowledge and motivation, determine whether
learning experience designers can be successful in performing their roles in the organization and
achieving their goals. Organizational influences can be categorized into two different types:
models and settings (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). The first organizational influence
examined is a cultural model – a culture of trust. Cultural models are a shared set of
organizational beliefs and values that are learned over time. The second two organizational
influences examined can be categorized as cultural settings: professional development and the
daily school schedule. Cultural settings are more visible organizational influences such as
policies and procedures and the degree to which resources are available. Cultural models and
settings have an intertwined relationship and do not act in isolation. As Rueda (2011) notes,
while cultural settings in an educational organization can shape behavior, they are also shaped by
the individuals who are in the organization.
Culture of innovation. Cultures of innovation thrive when a culture of empathy is
cultivated. Maranville (1992) defines innovation as creating better solutions for new
48
requirements, and as design thinking places an emphasis on empathy, understanding the new
requirements for the users involved is at the core of the practice. As a result, the LEDs may see
the culture of Design39 as one where their fears and motivations will be understood and heard as
they uncover unique challenges to integrating design thinking into the curriculum. Understanding
the knowledge and motivational influences of the individuals empowers the organization to
create strong cultural models that ultimately influence cultural settings.
This study explored the degree to which Design39 cultivates a culture of innovation
among LEDs to change traditional methods of teaching and how this can be replicated across
other education systems. To ensure that the learning experience designers continue to see the
utility value in integrating design thinking, three elements must be in place – competence,
relatedness and autonomy (Eccles, 2010). Educators today did not grow up in environments
similar to those they are often teaching in today, as evidenced from the trending and declining
skills in Table 1. As a result, meeting the competence need is critical to empowering the learning
experience designers to continue learning and collaborating in a safe environment where they
can experience success at their mastery attempts. Design39 places a high value on the idea that
educators are learners as well by referencing their environment as a learning centered lab for all.
They recognize that educators need the time and space to continue learning as well, as a result
they provide one hour at the start of every morning for them to come together as grade level
teams and co-create the curriculum. In providing this space, innovation is inherently valued and
recognized as being iterative and ongoing, not just once a month or once a week but each and
every day. This assumed asset explored how LEDs together with the organization have created a
culture where learning is dynamic for not just the students but for everyone involved.
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Professional development. In a 2017 report from Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC),
educators expressed low confidence in teaching trending skills and 79% stated they needed more
release time and professional development. Hammond and Gardner (2017) outline effective
elements of teacher professional development as content focused, active learning, collaboration,
coaching and modeling, feedback and reflection, and sustainability. In collaboration with the
union, Design39 was able to provide one hour of collaboration time daily for LEDs so they can
continue to enhance and develop their ability to integrate design thinking into the curriculum. In
addition to the daily collaboration time, LEDs have opportunities to participate in conferences
and other activities. Design39 was intentional about creating a cultural setting that emphasized
the value they placed on innovation and learning as educators continue to enhance and develop
their craft and examine how they can create learning environments that focus on trending skills
versus declining skills. Educators have design studios to meet together to plan lessons daily.
Koehler et al. (2007) found that when educators were able to engage in design teams as opposed
to standard workshop experiences that are more passive in nature, where one instructor is at the
front of the room telling educators what they should be doing, they were able to wrestle with
how to create learning experiences that allow students to develop trending skills through the
thoughtful integration of pedagogy, content and technology.
School schedule. The roots of many educational practices lie in the industrial education
model in an effort to prepare students for factory work (Cohen, 1968). The traditional school
schedule is one such component, where students move from one block of subject matter to the
next with little to no connection between the different areas. Design39 created a schedule that
allows for the integration of design thinking into the curriculum. Throughout the week, students
engage in a series of different workshop style classes. This research examined how this schedule
50
works in practice and enables the organization to accomplish its performance goal related to
creating learning experiences that are designed with the individual learner in mind to empower
students with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive in their world.
The knowledge, motivation and organization influences at Design39 merge together to
create a learning experience powered by pedagogical practices to help students thrive. Together,
the intentional use of space and time exemplify how cultural models and settings work together
to exemplify how the values of the organization strengthen the goals of the organization (Rueda,
2011). Table 6 presents the assumed organizational assets on LEDs’ performance.
Table 6
Assumed Organizational Influences
Organizational
Influence Category
Assumed Organizational Assets

Cultural Model
Influence 1
Design39 cultivates a culture of innovation among LEDs to change
traditional methods of teaching.

Cultural Setting
Influence 1
Design39 provides professional development to LEDs, so they can
continue to enhance and develop their ability to integrate design
thinking into the curriculum.
Cultural Setting
Influence 2
Design39 created a schedule that allows for the integration of design
thinking into the curriculum.

Conclusion
It is the teacher, not the technology that creates transformational environments (Fisher,
2006). As this chapter presented the challenges of education reform, automation and the digital
use divide are complex and require a radical overhaul of what used to be to design what today’s
learners need. Using the Clark and Estes Gap Analysis Conceptual Framework can help uncover
how the LEDs at Design39 have acquired and sustained the knowledge, self-efficacy,
pedagogical beliefs and school culture that are essential to defining and designing a new
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grammar of school with design thinking. Chapter 3 presents the methodology to understand the
knowledge, motivation and organization assets that serve as promising practices to eradicate
inequities so that all students can take advantage of the opportunities afforded in today’s world.

52
CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
This dissertation examines how design thinking can prepare students with the knowledge,
skills and mindsets to thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. As the industrial model
of education weakens the link between education and economic mobility, schools are looking for
ways to provide students with the knowledge, skills and mindsets demanded by today’s world.
Design thinking has emerged as one framework for problem solving and problem finding that
provides students with the skills and mindsets to work with information across disciplines,
strengthening their ability as communicators, collaborators, critical thinkers, and creators. This
qualitative study will examine the knowledge, motivation and organization assets of the learning
experience designers’ (LEDs) ability to integrate design thinking into the K-8 curriculum at
Design39. The purpose of a qualitative research study is to explore how people interpret,
construct knowledge and provide meaning to their experiences (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This
qualitative study aims to understand the meaning for LEDs on the events, experiences and
actions involved with design thinking when teaching in K-8 (Maxwell, 2013). Furthermore, a
qualitative study seeks to understand the context within which participants act and the process by
which events take place. The purpose of this study is to utilize the Clark and Estes (2008) Gap
Analysis framework to explore Design39 as a promising practice so as to make
recommendations in the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources that may
be appropriate for solving this problem of practice at another organization. The following
research questions will guide the study:
1. What are the LEDs’ knowledge and motivation assets related to integrating design
thinking into the curriculum?
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2. What is the interaction between the organizational culture and relationships by leadership
on LEDs knowledge and motivation?
3. What recommendations in the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational
resources may be appropriate for solving the problem of practice at another organization?
The research design and methods for data collection and analysis will be presented.
Participating Stakeholders
The stakeholder population of focus for this qualitative study were the learning
experience designers (LEDs) at Design39. LEDs are known as educators or teachers in
traditional school environments. At the time of the study, there were 54 LEDs at Design39, and
they taught in grade level teams. This research conducted a survey of LEDs in addition to focus
group interviews for each grade level team from K-8, individual interviews, and observations of
LEDs planning for instruction and learning experiences before and after the interviews.
Survey Sampling Criterion and Rationale
The criteria below were used:
Criterion 1. Served as a full-time learning experience designer at Design39
Criterion 2. Taught as part of a grade level team in grades K-8
Criterion 3. Have taught at Design39 for at least one year.
Focus Group/Individual Sampling Criterion and Rationale
The criteria below were used to recruit participants:

Criterion 1. Served as a full-time learning experience designer at Design39
Criterion 2. Taught as part of a grade level team in grades K-8
Criterion 3. Have taught at Design39 for at least one year.

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Focus Group/Individual Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
The initial phase of this study consisted of a survey that was sent to all LEDs. The second
phase of the study consisted of a set of focus group interviews with each grade level team at
Design39. The focus group interviews were followed up with six individual interviews across
the grade level teams. Through a purposeful selection, a deliberately selected group of people
were chosen for interviews (Maxwell, 2013). This allowed the researcher to discover, gain
insight and understand how the learning experience designers’ (LED) knowledge, motivation,
and organizational assets related to integrating design thinking into the curriculum to enhance
and develop the way teaching and learning is carried out in K-8 to prepare students to thrive in
relation to the research questions. Since the LED’s work in teams, interviewing them together
allowed for understanding the dynamic between the individual and collaborative knowledge and
motivation that they brought to the group through our conversations. So that they could
effectively speak to the organizational culture and impact on their knowledge and motivation, it
was important that the learning experience designers had spent at least one-year teaching at
Design39 so that the experiences they shared were a result of their experience at Design39 versus
a different organization.
Observation Sampling Criterion and Rationale
Criterion 1. Classroom with a learning activity taking place.
Criterion 2. At least two learning experience designers from the grade level team
present.
Criterion 3. A core curriculum class, not an extracurricular lesson.
Criterion 4: Curriculum planning in the design studio
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The observations served as a way of refining questions during the interviews about how
they are able to integrate design thinking into the curriculum. In addition, the observations
served as a follow up to curate examples of the ideas that the LEDs share during our focus group
interviews. LEDs were also observed during their planning time in the design studio to uncover
their knowledge, motivation, and organizational supports when planning for the integration
design thinking into the curriculum. Together, these three methods served as a means of
triangulation, using the responses to the survey, the answers in the focus group interviews, the
answers in the individual interviews and the observations to see if they supported a single
conclusion (Maxwell, 2013).
Data Collection and Instrumentation
The purpose of a mixed-methods research study is to explore how people interpret,
construct knowledge and provide meaning to their experiences (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). To
this end, data collected included a survey, focus group interviews, individual interviews and
observations. This approach allowed for complementarity and expansion (Maxwell, 2013). The
interviews provided insight into the perspectives, knowledge and motivation of the LEDs while
the observations provided an opportunity to describe the setting, impact on student behavior and
events that take place in the learning environment with the LEDs.
Survey
In the first phase of the study, a quantitative survey was sent to all LEDs at Design39
who met the criteria. The survey sought self-reported data about motivation and organization
influences in their ability to meet the performance goal. The survey was distributed via email
with an explanation of the purpose of the study, how the findings would be used and the
confidence that the results would remain anonymous.
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Focus Group Interviews
The primary researcher interviewed the LEDs in both the focus group setting and
individual setting. There were a total of three group interviews and six individual interviews
across K-8. The principal and primary researcher coordinated to determine the most appropriate
time to conduct the interviews. An email was sent to all the LEDs with the details of the study,
and this was coordinated by the principal. Both the focus group and individual interviews were
relatively informal. In the focus group, the informal setting was important and they felt
comfortable answering the questions together. The interviews took place in the design studio
where the LEDs do their daily collaborative planning. This space allowed the LEDs to
demonstrate and visualize the ideas they referenced and allowed the researcher to gain a better
understanding of how they design learning experiences together. The interview questions
explored the knowledge, motivation, organizational assets, experiences, feelings and opinions on
integrating design thinking into the curriculum for their respective grade level. Furthermore, the
space was representative of the environment leadership has designed for the LEDs. Utilizing the
design studio enhanced the conversation about the interaction between the organizational culture
and LED’s knowledge and motivation. Each focus group interview lasted an hour and the
individual interviews ranged from 30-45 minutes. No incentive was provided to participate in
the focus group or individual interviews.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted where the questions were largely open-ended
with focused questions as follow ups. Each group was asked the questions in the same order,
with an initial set of baseline questions for all groups (Appendix A) and a list of follow up probes
(Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The primary focus of this dissertation was exploring the role of
collaboration between the LEDs and interviewing them in this context provided additional details
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about their dynamic with concrete examples. This method provided a lens not possible through
individual interviews and a more interactive discussion to hear their individual responses, see
how they related to one another, and how much they agree/disagree with one another (Merriam
& Tisdell, 2016).
Before the interviews began, the necessary protocol as identified in the ethics section was
followed. Once the interviews began, to understand the LED’s knowledge, motivation and
organizational assets related to integrating design thinking into the curriculum, around 7-9
questions were asked using the experience, behavior, ideal and feeling type questions to
understand what specific strategies and skills they were utilizing to integrate design thinking into
the curriculum (Patton, 2015). For example, questions such as, “Walk me through how you
would design a learning experience for a unit of study” and “What is the value of integrating
design thinking,” were asked.
There were also questions about the interaction between the organizational culture and
relationships by leadership on learning experience designers’ knowledge and motivation using
the same question types. For example, questions like, “Describe an ideal professional learning
experience to support your ability to integrate design thinking into the curriculum” and “What
opportunities are available for collaboration,” were asked.
Observation
A total of ten observations were carried out to expand on the context gathered from the
interviews. There were two observations from the elementary and one from the middle school.
One lesson before the interview was observed and one after, and there were two observations
during the collaboration time for K-3 and 4-5. One hour was spent in each observation, gathering
a total of 20 hours of observations. Using the observation guidelines from Merriam and Tisdell,
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field notes were taken on the physical setting, the participants and what they were doing and
saying, the activities and interactions between the LED’s and the students and the conversations
taking place and the subtle factors (2016).
Documents and Artifacts
To effectively use the time and to create meaningful questions during interviews and
observations, information from the website as well as artifacts from the LEDs were collected.
Documents are a third major source of data in addition to interviews and observations (Merriam
& Tisdell, 2016). There are a number of documents available on the website that were collected
explaining the founding of the school, the mission, the guiding principles, the schedule, the
different activities that take place throughout the day and the different student projects to provide
context for the interviews and understanding of the LEDs’ knowledge and motivation. LED’s
were asked for artifacts that pertained to the lessons they were designing that were being
observed so that there was context. In addition, examples of rubrics and student work were
requested and received. The documents and artifacts lent themselves to help uncover meaning,
develop understanding and discover insights to understand the interaction between the
organizational culture and relationships by leadership on learning experience designers’
knowledge and motivation and provide needed data to support findings and observations
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Data Analysis
To inform the future interviews and observations in the study, data analysis began during
data collection. Analytic memos were written after each interview and each observation. As
Maxwell (2013) advises, letting data pile up makes the task of final analysis increasingly
difficult. Thoughts, concerns, and initial conclusions about the data in relation to the conceptual
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framework and research questions were recorded. In addition, upon consent by focus group
participants, the interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded.
In the initial phase of analysis once the interviews had been transcribed using online
software, Qualtrics and AtlasTI, the interview transcripts and observational notes were
thoroughly reviewed. During this process, additional notes were taken and ideas rewritten that
addressed the themes, categories and relationships that were emerging. Color codes were created
to identify each of the emerging themes, categories and relationships. Each of the transcripts and
observation notes used open coding where the transcripts were examined for empirical codes
and a priori codes were applied from the conceptual framework such as confidence,
collaboration, reflection and self-awareness. The use of questioning was critical in this phase to
refine and identify possible probes during the next round of interviews (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
A second phase of analysis was conducted where empirical and a priori codes were
aggregated into analytic/axial codes. In addition to this, strategies such as narrative analysis were
connected to strengthen the data analysis (Maxwell 2013). Furthermore, in this stage,
comparisons to identify different pieces of data for similarities and differences and looking at
emotions that are expressed were identified (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). In the third phase of data
analysis, pattern codes and themes that emerged in relation to the conceptual framework and
study questions were identified. Documents and artifacts were analyzed for evidence consistent
with the concepts in the conceptual framework. Throughout the process, memos were
continuously being captured in a notes folder on the iPad. This allowed for regular capturing of
insights about the data as they arose (Maxwell, 2013), such as LEDs’ knowledge of how to
reflect on their effectiveness in integrating design thinking into the curriculum, LEDs’ belief that
they are capable of effectively integrating the design thinking process into the curriculum
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alongside traditional methods and how Design39 cultivates a culture of innovation among LEDs
to change traditional methods of teaching.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
In order to be considered credible and trustworthy, a qualitative study must be conducted
in a rigorous and ethical manner allowing other researchers to replicate or apply the findings
from the study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Creswell (2014) described eight strategies to
consider when strengthening the trustworthiness of research: (a) triangulate, converging several
data sources in order to identify themes; (b) member checking, conducting follow-up interviews
with participants to discuss the major finding; (c) thick description, when conveying the findings
provide a comprehensive description of the context; (d) bias, present characteristics about the
researcher that could influence interpretations of the findings; (e) negative evidence, introduce
counter arguments or evidence about the themes; (f) prolonged time, spend a significant amount
of time with participants in their setting to gain a deeper understanding; (g) peer debriefing, find
another person or peer to review and ask questions about the research; and (h) external auditor,
select an independent investigator to offer an objective review of the research and findings.
This study is a promising practice and utilized multiple validity procedures such as
triangulation, member checking, and peer debriefing to establish the credibility of the study.
Triangulation involved examining information gathered from survey, interviews, observations
and documents to establish themes. Member checking was conducted after the focus group
interviews and observations. The researcher also identified a peer to review the research to
ensure clarity, coherence, and interpretation of findings throughout the study.
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Furthermore, full disclosure has been provided of the researcher’s biases in the ethics
section. Since this is a promising practice, confidence in applying the findings and implementing
policy changes is key.
Ethics
This study aimed to discover and understand how LEDs at Design39 interpret, construct
knowledge and provide meaning to using the design thinking method in a K-8 public school.
With the stakeholder group being LEDs and the research questions designed to discover and
understand their experiences, the primary methods of data collection were the survey and focus
groups and individual interviews and observations. To safeguard the participants, all ethical
guidelines as established by the IRB were adhered to. Glesne (2011) identifies five core
principles – informed consent, permission to withdraw, elimination of all risks, benefits to
subjects that outweigh any risk and conduction of the experiment by a qualified investigator. All
participants were provided with an information sheet outlining the purpose, goals and other
pertinent information related to the study. Within this document, the participant was made aware
that at any point they may choose to withdraw, without penalty. This qualitative study is a
promising practice, prior to the start of each interview and included within the consent document,
participants were reminded that anything they wished to keep confidential should be noted.
While this is a promising practice, there was a possibility that there were some topics that may
arise that they wished to remain confidential, that provide possible context for certain events or
experiences, such as interaction with parents or challenges with the community. All efforts were
made to uphold participant confidentiality. Prior to the interviews and/or observations,
permission was requested to observe and record (audio/video) participants individually during
their collaboration time. There were no incentives for participating in the study. At the end, a
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thank you note was sent to participants and the principal. Participation in the study was voluntary
and, after confirming dates with the principal, an email was sent out to all grade level team
members inviting them to participate. All field notes, audio and video recordings were captured
using an iPad and stored locally on the device. These notes were stored on a password protected
device with no identifying information.
While the researcher did not have a formal relationship with Design39, they did know
some of their educators from time together at conferences and, as a result of being in the same
field, see them at education events. The primary role as the investigator was in the role as a
graduate student at USC.
A potential bias that exists is the researcher’s in-depth work having taught and advocated
for design thinking as a methodology in K12 education. Glesne (2011) points out that feelings of
exploitation may arise for the researcher. While learning from their experiences and publishing
the findings will further advance the researcher’s role, the principal and educators at Design 39
in initial visits confirmed how this collaboration provides as much value to them as it does for
the researcher.
Limitations and Delimitations
As with any research study, there are limitations and delimitations in the scope of the
design. There are aspects of the study that can and cannot be controlled. Limitations are, for the
most part, constructs outside of the researcher’s control. This includes how the interviewees
responded to the questions presented and the truthfulness in their responses. This limitation was
partially addressed by assuring confidentiality in data collecting and conducting member checks.
Delimitations, on the other hand, are based on intentional choices the research made, meaning
that they are elements within the research study over which the researcher has control. For
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example, a delimitation was the decision to focus on one stakeholder group to understand the
performance of this organization, or the limited number of observations conducted.
The anticipated limitations were the truthfulness of respondents, and given there were focus
group interviews, it is challenging to control how their answers impact what each other may
individually say or not say, and this could have been heightened with the focus group interviews.
The anticipated delimitations lie again with the focus group nature of the interviews, how their
ideas and perceptions influenced one another have both positive and negative connotations.
Effective use of probes could solve for this challenge and prompt the interviewee to expand
when questions were focused directly towards them. These were choices made by the researcher
based on time and resource constraints of the study, and the burden placed on the organization

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CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND FINDINGS
Design39 is a public TK-8 school formed upon eight guiding principles – design
thinking, connecting globally, personalization, creativity, inquiry, growth mindset,
communication, collaboration and technology. Their mission is to create life-ready thought
leaders who elevate humanity. The problem of practice addressed by this dissertation is how
design thinking can be used as one approach in K12 education to define and design a new
grammar of school. This approach is one way to address the larger challenge of ensuring that all
students are adequately prepared with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to innovate, create new
products, services and business models, so that they may have access to opportunities that will
allow them to thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. Design39 stands as a promising
practice in how they have used design thinking to define and design a new grammar of school
creating life ready thought leaders who elevate humanity. Furthermore, by providing their
Learning Experience Designers (LEDs) with an environment that fosters trust, autonomy and
ownership, they have created a model and set of guiding practices that can be utilized by other
schools interested in defining and designing a new grammar of school. This approach is one way
to address the larger challenge of ensuring that all students are adequately prepared with the
knowledge, skills and mindsets to innovate, create new products, services and business models,
so that they may have access to opportunities that will allow them to thrive in their world as
global citizens.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the methodology for this study was a mixed-methods
approach to gather data for analysis, using qualitative and quantitative data including survey,
interviews, observations and document analysis. The participating stakeholders were the
Learning Experience Designers from K-8 at Design39. Their experience ranged from 2 to 30+
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years of teaching. An online survey was sent to all 54 learning experience designers at Design39,
with a 100 percent completion rate. In addition, a selected group of members from each of the
grade level teams was interviewed together as a focus group. Grade level teams are organized as
K-3, 4-5 and 6-8. A random selection of 5 LEDs was then interviewed individually.
Observations of learning experiences throughout the day and of the LEDs planning in their
collaboration space known as the Design Studio were conducted. The gathered data were then
analyzed to determine validation of the assumed knowledge, motivation and organizational
assets related to their performance as outlined in Chapter Two so that these practices can
potentially be replicated at other organizations. The research questions guiding the study are:
1. What is the LEDs’ knowledge and motivation influences related to integrating design
thinking into the curriculum?
2. What is the interaction between the organizational culture and relationships by leadership
on LEDs knowledge and motivation?
3. What recommendations in the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational
resources may be appropriate for solving the problem of practice at other schools?
This chapter addresses the first two questions guiding this study. Using the Clark and Estes’
(2008) gap analysis theoretical framework, validation of the learning experience designers’
knowledge, motivation, and organizational assets related to integrating design thinking into the
curriculum were examined. Evidence-based practices that can be adopted by other organizations
will be shared in Chapter Five to address the third research question.

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Participating Stakeholders
Participant Interview Type Gender Years Teaching
LED 1 FC 1 Female 30 years
LED 2 FC 1 Female 2 years
LED 3 FC 1 Female 6 years
LED 4 FC 1 Female 19 years
LED 5 FC 3 Female 20 years
LED 6 FC 3 Female 4 years
LED 7 FC 3 Male 28 years
LED 8 FC 3 Female 33 years
LED 9 FC 3 Male 14 years
LED 10 FC 2 Male 3 years
LED 11 FC 2 Female 11 years
LED 12 FC 2 Female 20 years
LED 13 FC 2 Female 24 years
LED 14 FC 2 Female 6 years
LED 15 FC 2 Female 8 years
LED 16 FC 2 Female 2 years
LED 17 FC 2 Female 10 years
LED 18 FC 2 Female 11 years
LED 19 Individual Female 24 years
LED 20 Individual Female 14 years
LED 21 Individual Female 17 years
LED 22 Individual Female 30 years
LED 23 Individual Female 6 years
LED 24 Individual Female 8 years

Findings of Assumed Knowledge Assets
The knowledge of learning experience designers in relation to integrating and practicing
design thinking is essential if they are going to define and design a new grammar of school and
transition from an industrial model of education to one that allows everyone to develop the
knowledge, skills and mindsets needed to thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. This
section shares the findings related to the assumed knowledge assets of the learning experience
designers at Design39. Each of these was addressed by both the survey and in the interview
questions. The assumed knowledge assets to integrate design thinking into the curriculum that
were explored through data collection included how the learning experience designers
understand the design thinking process, integrate the design thinking process into the curriculum
and reflect on their effectiveness in integrating design thinking. Table 7 highlights the assumed
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knowledge assets and whether or not they were validated through the data collection process as
enabling LEDs to create learning experiences designed with the individual learner in mind to
empower students with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive.
Table 7
Assumed Knowledge Assets
Assumed Knowledge Assets Existing Asset New Asset
Understanding the Design Thinking Process X
Integrating the Design Thinking Process into the Curriculum X
Reflecting on Effectiveness of Integrating Design Thinking X

Understanding the Design Thinking Process
Borko and Putnam (1995) share that how educators think is related to their knowledge
and to understand how LEDs are using design thinking to teach the standards-based curriculum,
it is important to understand their knowledge systems. Despite design thinking having its roots
outside of education, when asked, “what does design thinking mean to you?” the LEDs identified
many commonalities amongst their own work as educators and design thinking. Moreover, they
appreciated the alignment of their work with the vocabulary and structure of the design thinking
framework. Over 50% of the LEDs interviewed identified design thinking as providing them
with a common vocabulary and structure for what they already do. The LEDs identified
educators as inherent design thinkers due to the shared human-centered focus of working with
users, in this case the learners, creating ongoing design challenges with cyclical learning tasks
involving testing, feedback and iteration, and a design mindset to address the wide variety of
complex problems within their individual classrooms and across education organizations. LED 5
shared,
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I just look at it as a process, a process in my mind that we kind of naturally go through as
educators, and so with the design thinking process I feel that it is codifying what we do
and so we start off always in empathy and empathy is the heart of design thinking and so
we are problem solving, who are we problem solving for – people, our learners and so
this entire process that we go through of brain dumping it, trying it, getting feedback and
coming back to it again so that we can make sure we were really insightful about what
the problem really was for the users and we continue around this process to fine tune a
solution is the design thinking process.
In FC2, LED 13 shared how they can immediately tell the difference between design
thinkers and non-design thinkers, sharing how “the practice of it leads to a mindset where non
design thinkers see problems and they cycle through the problems not being able to move
forward, we see this in adults and in children. Having now practiced design thinking, my mind
immediately goes to solutions.”
Challenging the Definition of Design Thinking in Education
One of the ways mastery of knowledge is demonstrated is by teaching others (Fiorella &
Mayer, 2013). To assess their mastery knowledge of design thinking in education, learning
experience designers were asked to describe their confidence in teaching someone else how to
integrate design thinking into their curriculum.

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Figure 3
I Could Teach Someone Else How To Integrate Design Thinking Into Their Curriculum

The interview questions and observations supported their knowledge of understanding
design thinking as they shared examples of how they approached it, the influence it had on
students’ skills and mindsets and the common misconceptions and challenges when thinking
about integration. A challenge often associated with design thinking in education is not
integrating it into mainstream education as an equitable experience for all learners despite
showing that lower achieving students benefit more (Chin et al, 2019). As a result, design
thinking is often reserved for a few students in a STEM class, makerspaces or other electives
preventing deeper integration and movement towards an interdisciplinary learning experience for
all learners across all grade levels. Many LEDs acknowledged that although this is what it often
looked like in the first year of the school opening, they have since had the time, space and
collaborative opportunities to explore and create deeper integration. This was a point of reference
mentioned by 78% of LEDs. LED 1 shared, “I think a lot of people see design thinking as one
science activity, we design think everything from rules to problems that come up in the
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playground, it’s all through the day, they (the learners) are always looking for problems to
solve.”
LED 1 shared this after LED 2 shared a story about the impact she had seen design
thinking have on her learners,
I think one thing I see from having subbed at a lot of different schools is that here they
tend to develop their own strategies for problem solving. Instead of the students always
coming up to you and asking questions, they solve their own problems by finding a
resource inside or outside of the classroom with another LED and that helps carry them
because there are problems everywhere, there’s problems outside of school so they can
apply it in different situations.
Four LEDs made a note using the exact same language that “design thinking is not
always cardboard and duct tape.” What allows for deeper learning is as LED 8 highlighted, “not
every day is about using duct tape and cardboard, sometimes to do the design to solve the
problems you have to hunker down and read and research and so some days, design thinking is
highlighting and taking notes.” LED 4 in another focus group elaborated on this idea by sharing
that design thinking is a way of thinking, not always a product that is created at the end. Almost
all of the LEDs shared that to them design thinking was a mindset, a process of inquiry that
allowed for a more human centered environment where the learner was the focus. This
highlighted a critical shift in the culture at Design39, an element Sarason (2004) discussed in
saying no one ever asks, “why is school not a place where educators learn as well?” Design39 is
a campus where it is not just students who are learners, as LED 5 highlighted, “we are all
learners, here on campus we say we have big learners and little learners.”
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LEDs in all focus groups shared how ultimately design thinking was an opportunity to
design lessons that are “bigger than we are.” This allowed for the LEDs to create learning tasks
where the end result was not to just design a solution to a challenge that was identified, or to
simply go from one standard to another, checking off boxes along the way, but that the solution,
the work the learners were doing lived beyond the classroom for an authentic audience, where
learners are working on real world problems and presenting their solutions to a real world
audience.
Integrating Design Thinking Into the Curriculum
Vygotsky (1978) argues that culture plays a significant role in the construction of our
cognitive abilities and how we make meaning of the world around us. When the meaning about
the world we hold is challenged and we experience conflict between our attitudes, beliefs and
behaviors, we experience cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1967). One way to address this is to
learn in what Vygotsky (1978) called your zone of proximal development (ZPD). ZPD is the gap
between what you know and can achieve independently and where you would like to get to in
collaboration with or with support from others (Vygotsky, 1978). While this theory has
traditionally been applied to younger learners, there are many cases that apply this theory to adult
learners as well (Shah & Rashid, 2017). A unanimous sentiment shared across all LEDs was that
their ability to integrate design thinking was a result of social interactions with their peers. The
depth of examples shared by all the LEDs demonstrated not only their deep understanding of
integration but how they had been able to achieve it and why it was valuable for them and their
learners. Over 70% of the LEDs interviewed shared that before Design39 they had felt as if they
were isolated in their classroom, having many ideas but unable to implement them all. However,
when they came to Design39, collaboration with their peers allowed them to do things they had
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always dreamed of doing. At Design39 they were designing interdisciplinary learning
experiences that allowed them to merge the knowledge, skills and mindsets. Through the
collaboration experience, they made the transition from student-centered to learner centered.
While those two terms are often used synonymously, LEDs at Design39 make the distinction that
in a student-centered environment, the focus is on the collective group of students as learners.
The interviews with the LEDs revealed that for them learner centered environments are when we
begin to see everyone as an individual learner, with unique needs, strengths and challenges, “we
say we have big learners and little learners,” as shared by LED 5, “we are all helping each other
through change.”
The survey asked LEDs to share their confidence in their ability to integrate design thinking
into the curriculum, and 78% shared that they agree or strongly agree with the statement, “I feel
confident in my ability to integrate design thinking into the curriculum”.
Figure 4
LEDs Confidence in Integrating Design Thinking Into the Curriculum

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LED 21 shared how one of the first conversations they have is the difference between
what it means to be a student and what it means to be a learner by having conversations about
what the norms and roles look like for a learner and designing working agreements for their
space around that. The observations and document analysis validated the LEDs’ ability to
integrate design thinking into the curriculum.
Integration of Design Thinking in TK-3
The LEDs in a focus group for K-3 shared how the learners were spending the year
exploring the theme of power that resulted from a unit on identity and bias. Whereas in a
traditional classroom environment, the teacher may go in with a ready-made lesson, at Design39
the LEDs begin by presenting the idea to the students and asking them, “what does power mean
to you?” as a way of designing tasks that are personal and relevant to them. From there, the
LEDs meet daily to build on the idea and integrate the standards into the work they are doing. In
the observed classes, they were looking at power of words, kindness and the power you have
every day. The students discussed and looked at acts of kindness that are happening every day
but are often overlooked. They were also discussing microaggressions and bias to help them
think more deeply about kindness due to the challenges in today’s society. For example, LED 1
shared, “the work we are doing with kindness then spirals into the science piece – how animals
are supported and the language arts piece with storytelling.”
The group shared how even after the unit had ended, they continued with the theme of
power and that other grade levels had been exploring this as well. LED 4 shared an example how
when talking about storytelling with the students, they had dived deeper into the power of words.
The students engaged in a learning task where the goal was to tell the story of a family member
who had moved to San Diego in six words. The students first conducted an interview with a
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family member and then came back to class to share six powerful words that stood out to them
from the interview that would help tell the story. LED 4 shared, “this was challenging because
they are only in first and second grade so how do you explain to them what a powerful word
even is?” Once again by allowing the learners to direct the conversation, she was able to
empathize with them and see which words were meaningful to them. LED 4 shared, “this is
where collaboration becomes critical because I don’t always know what to do but I get to discuss
ideas and hear what others are doing and what they might try.” Building on this idea, LED 5
shared, “you will see the theme of power emerge not just in the work we are doing with our
learners but also amongst us as well. These questions pull us all in to rethink what experiences
we are providing which is very powerful, when these questions start to bubble up there are these
vulnerabilities that pop up, we don’t know the answer to this, can you help me with that, that is
crucial because we don’t have all the answers but together we do or together we can uncover
what they are.”
Here LED 1 highlighted not only what design thinking means but also how they integrate
it at Design39,
If I were a traditional teacher listening to us and thinking wait you are teaching 1st grade
you should be teaching habitats and following the standards, what’s unique about what
we do is we can brainstorm ideas that are relevant and happening right now and we can
use the design thinking process and collaboration and what we know and what the kids
know and tie that to instruction and the standards. It doesn’t have to be by the book, it’s
what do we want to create, this is a current topic and we get to do that.
In discussing their knowledge about integrating design thinking into the curriculum, FG1
shared how this has now moved beyond the classroom walls. The LEDs shared, “if students
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identify a challenge on campus they do the empathy work and they identify the challenge they
want to solve for and they’ll come to Joe, the principal and say we did our empathy work and
this is what we would like to do and why. You don’t see this happen at many campuses where
students have this kind of voice and autonomy where they see a challenge and feel empowered to
do something about it.”
Integration of Design Thinking in Grades Four and Five
Whereas in K-3 students were new to school and did not have a traditional model to refer
back to, this was not the case in grades four and five where for the initial years of the school’s
operation they had to help their learners unlearn and relearn as everyone had come in with a
different definition of “school.” It was not until year six of the school’s operation where they had
a majority of their learners who had been immersed in a design thinking environment from a
young age who shared in the vision of what “school” was at Design39. “They are really design
thinkers when they come to us in 4th grade and it speaks highly to the work that the K-3 LEDs
do” shared LED 15. A challenge highlighted by LEDs in FG2 was that at this age those students
who do not have the motivation to drive their own learning presents a unique design challenge
that is prevalent when students come to the school from somewhere else at this age level as they
are not used to this type of environment.
In FG2 the LEDs from grades four and five shared how design thinking was not just a
part of the curriculum, but it was embedded within all the social interactions as well. For the first
1-2 years of operation, they shared that they would often say they were doing design thinking
projects and at year three there was a transition to where it just became, “how we lived and
breathed,” shared LED 14. Student voice was an area that the team mentioned drove how they
designed their experience for learners. To share an example, LED 24 walked through the entire
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process of a unit of study from beginning to end. It starts, she shared, with how we plan our year
in collaboration where we divide learning into three different chunks, we group the standards
across the curriculum and explore areas for cross-curricular integration. The LEDs found that
social studies generally served as a strong overarching theme under which all the other areas
could be integrated. They then take the unit of study and divide it into three areas – direct
instruction, application and then creation. LED 24 went on to explain, “for example, in the
traditional 5th grade the year starts with narrative writing, we start with informational, how to
find resources and how to read non-fiction because they need this skillset to do the projects
throughout the year.”
When thinking about how they wanted to approach the Age of Exploration, they wanted
their learners to experience what it meant to be an explorer. Initially they had thought to do a
poetry slam where the learners would tell the narrative from two sides of history – one from the
explorer’s perspective and the other from the indigenous person’s perspective. They then
pivoted, a word the team uses often, after experiencing a moving evening with the parents of
their African American community. LED 24 shared, “We come together often to have
conversations about race and how to enhance and develop racial literacy amongst all of us,
especially when thinking about how and what we include in our learning experiences.” During
one of their sessions together, the African American parents had created a gallery walk of
African history before slavery. They asked the LEDs to walk around the room and to reflect and
ask questions, and LED 24 stated, “We immediately dropped the poetry idea after remembering
the impact this experience had on us and recreated it for the kids.” During the opening activity,
the LEDs created a gallery walk sharing images of the rich African history and culture prior to
slavery and asking the students to reflect on what they wonder and how this makes them feel.
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LED 24 stated, “These kids are such design thinkers and they approach everything with empathy,
they immediately started asking questions such as ‘why didn’t they fight back’ and ‘why did this
happen to them?’”
After doing an in-depth study of the age of exploration, it was time to move to the
creation. The 4/5 LED team decided to have their learners do explorations in the 21st century in
their hometown of San Diego. Learners were given criteria and constraints, for example they had
to find a place that would be free of charge and the bus transportation cost would be covered.
The students broke into teams and did their research, as they had learned how to do this earlier
on when learning about informational writing. They would write a paper advocating for their
choice about why they chose that location, why everyone should go and what they would learn.
Some of the students chose Los Angeles, and they got to do a cost analysis, bringing the topic of
decimals in that they had been learning about in math. They had to pitch their ideas to the 4/5
students, parents and LEDs during a showcase. From dioramas to iMovies to posters to
Minecraft, there was a wide variety of ways in how the learners had chosen to share their pitches.
The top voted team from each class would go into a final round for one more round of pitching
and voting. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 the groups were unable to go on the trip that had won
the most votes.
When asked what assessment looked like throughout the process, LED 24 shared that
they provide the competencies and the learners show how they achieved them. In addition, they
shared that formative assessment plays a critical role and that it is used daily to inform
collaboration and planning. Assessment, LED 24 noted, “becomes a natural part of the process.
You get what you put into things they realize. The kids are going to vote, but the educators and
parents will too so it has to be fun and informative. It’s like real life assessments, you don’t get
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an A if you do a good presentation at work, you get the job. We really work to build intrinsic
motivation and rarely mention numbers and letter grades.”
This particular learning experience demonstrated how design thinking provides not only
an avenue for defining and designing a new grammar of school, but how it exposes silent racial
inequities within the system through empathy, dialogue and problem-solving. The LEDs’ racial
literacy allowed them to create authentic learning experiences where they merged authentic
school reform with effective teaching. A criticism often made of these types of experiences that
move away from multiple choice to oral presentations, debates and exhibitions is that they fail to
personalize the experience through truly understanding their learners (Darling-Hammond, 1994).
The daily formative assessments highlighted by FG2 to inform daily collaboration is an example
of designing authentic performance-based assessments bridging the digital use divide, providing
learners with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive as humans in a global and
interconnected world.
Integration of Design Thinking in Grades Six-Eighth
In the focus group interview with the middle grade LEDs, they highlighted that it can be
more challenging to integrate design thinking at the middle school level. Among the top two
reasons were the increasing curricular content demand and working with learners who were
familiar with a more structured learning experience. As shared in FG2, the LEDs in FG3 also
noted a significant difference between the learners who were immersed in this experience since
elementary and those who had just transferred from another school. For example, LED 7 shared
that they ask questions such as, “Can you just tell me what to do? What do you mean I can do an
assignment again?” The LEDs shared that helping the students transition from a fixed mindset to
a growth mindset is essential. LED 7 expanded on this challenge by sharing that in addition to
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the learning experience, they are also not familiar with the environment, “they are used to
moving from class to class every 45 minutes, being told what to do within each of those minutes
and being in the same seat every day and this is a really big transition, but they soon realize this
is a really good gig and they begin to adapt.” LED 6 further shared how being immersed in the
environment helps them develop a growth mindset through the realization that learning is more
than a grade. Being able to step away from that feeling of anxiety over grades and perfection,
they begin to enjoy the experience and experiment with different methods of learning. The
physical spaces play a critical role because they can step into another room and do a recording or
create something, and they enjoy this autonomy.
With all of the middle school LEDs coming from a different school, they attributed their
success to having thought partners where together they could collaborate to sustain the
integration of design thinking. LED 8 highlighted that this type of collaboration takes time and
commitment, “While this did not develop immediately, it is through ongoing collaboration that
you begin to develop your norms and values that allow for better systems between you and really
for trust to develop between one another.” Like many of the other LEDs interviewed, LED 9
shared how even though they had tried to challenge traditional methods, they did so on an island
alone making it very challenging. There were two examples that were shared to highlight how
this was done. The first topic was about westward expansion and the second topic was a science
and humanities unit on evolution. LED 7 shared that during the westward expansion unit the
learners broke up into their interest area on the topic and their task was to design a book about
the topic they had chosen within westward expansion for 4th graders. This unit highlighted what
other focus groups had mentioned about integrating design thinking and this was the shift from
sharing work with just the teacher compared to creating with purpose for an authentic audience.
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While there are many ways you can explore the topic of westward expansion, in this case the
LEDs asked their learners to create a book that would tell the story for a particular user - a 4th
grade student at Design39.
The learners observed and interviewed 4th graders on campus to understand their reading
levels, their needs and their interests to determine how to share the topic with them. A more
traditional learning task might ask learners to look up the topic individually and design a book
that they would turn into the teacher. The shift here from designing for the teacher vs designing
for a real user demonstrated the integration of design thinking. LED 8 shared here a core part is
how and from whom they are getting feedback and how this is always interesting to see,
They come back and they are like oh that was terrible and so we say ok what was terrible
about it and they say oh they didn’t understand anything we were saying and so we say ok
and so when we talk about empathy this is a real world moment and middle schoolers can be
very stubborn and this failure is a great moment making them more open to feedback.
These learning tasks highlight a series of core skills identified when engaging in design
thinking – learning from failure, creative confidence, comfort with ambiguity, empathy, making
and iterating. LED 9 shared another example from middle school where science and humanities
came together. This once again highlights a theme that emerged across all the interviews about
the shift in who are we creating for? The shift towards creating for a real-world user amplifies
the integration of the design thinking process and the knowledge, skills and mindsets from
engaging in a learning task designed for an authentic audience. LED 6 shared how in humanities
they had started working on an evolution essay. LED 9 built on the idea by having students in
science create a children’s book for younger students. Similar to the example on westward
expansion, they once again had to design for a real user. LED 9 shared, “evolution can be a
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complicated topic, so to communicate it to someone younger they have to pair with a younger
learner throughout the project, they do empathy interviews – so they find out oh you like pandas
I’ll put that in the book.”
These examples show how LEDs at all grade levels are actively working to integrate
design thinking into the curriculum. Their experiences demonstrate that despite having taught in
traditional environments, they were able to adapt, learn and apply design thinking into their
curriculum through working collaboratively. Furthermore, their examples demonstrate the value
that it brings to their learners in developing their knowledge, skills and mindsets.
Reflecting on Integrating Design Thinking
It is essential that individuals engage in metacognitive practice so that they can be aware
of how they are applying their knowledge and whether their application is optimal or needs to be
adjusted (Rueda, 2011). In reflecting on their effectiveness in integrating design thinking, the
LEDs shared the influence it had on them as professionals. Every LED interviewed talked about
how reflecting on using the design thinking practices challenging the traditional methods of
teaching had given them a voice, a sense of purpose, and autonomy as a professional that they
had never experienced before. When asked how they reflect when the experience they had
planned is over, they shared that their metacognitive practice emerged as organic as a result of
using the design thinking process to plan the learning experiences. The LEDs shared how they
don’t plan out instruction for the week or month, “we are planning, reflecting, iterating and
pivoting each and every day” said LED 3. LEDs 1 and 5 shared, “We go from collaboration in
the morning to the classroom and then something will happen or one of the kids will say
something and we’re like oh we need to go in a different direction or we need to pause and go
deeper because the kids are really curious about this topic.”
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LED 4 summarized the reflective process by sharing a pre and post example how when
previously planning a lesson for students in the classroom, it all was contained within that space,
how they were planning and moving through the content and “then at the end we might say next
year we’ll change this and it gets saved in a notebook and you never look at it again. However,
now when planning, the purpose and audience, our learners, are taken into consideration each
and every day. Our assessments are not just a multiple-choice test at the end of a unit, we are
listening in, watching and hearing what they need, and we adjust accordingly to meet them
where they are.”
A distinction made by LED 12 was how reflection is not only on knowledge, but on the
mindsets and skills as well. LED 11 elaborated on this idea by sharing, “it’s not only us as LEDs
who are reflecting on the practice, we honor this time with our learners as well, so as they share
their reflections we are taking it in and adjusting the experiences we are designing for them.”
LED 14 built on this by sharing how this allows them to enhance and develop their learners
social-emotional skills, a challenge we identified we needed to solve for at Design39.” When
asked what this looks like, LED 14 shared how in the morning they reflect together on the
previous day, “I’ll say you know what yesterday was a really hard day I saw a lot of frustrations
and let’s talk about that. We ask them to think about, ‘what was the issue at hand, how do we
solve it for the next time and why was it so hard’ so we really honor that time, it’s not just the
learners who need that time we do too and it really helps build the communication and coping
skills they need when engaging in these projects together.”
“We’re not just integrating design thinking into the curriculum it’s in the social
experiences as well. Through lots of practice, steps and experiences it helps shift the learner’s
mindset” shared LED 15. LED 12 expanded by sharing, “It is not just something you consciously
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do, it becomes a habit, and this is how we see things when socially they have problems we ask
them what are you going to do about it, let’s think about that empathy piece.” The development
of these social emotional skills allows for a shift for both the LEDs and their students towards
the freedom to fail. LED 11 shared, “We’re comfortable and the students are comfortable in
trying new ideas because we know that not every idea is going to work but we have this process
that can help us fail fast and fail forward.” LED 17 expanded on this idea sharing, “so reflection
doesn’t just happen at the end it happens throughout, in fact right at the start of any new project
we list what will success look like and what will failure look like and that grounds us as we
move forward.”
Every LED interviewed shared how when engaging in this type of teaching and learning
that focused on reflection prior to coming to Design39, they felt as if they were isolated on an
island and as LED 9 shared, ‘it’s just really hard, it doesn’t matter how supportive your
administration is it’s just really hard to do alone.” When asked what they believe made them
successful in doing the work they do at Design39, they all attributed their success to the people
that they work with. As LED 13 shared, we have nine brains working together instead of just
one.”
Synthesis of Results and Findings for Knowledge Influences
Throughout the interviews, it was evident that the LEDs had not only a strong
understanding of design thinking and how to integrate it and reflect on it, but that they were able
to do so because they worked in collaborative environments. A primary reason for the choice of
focus group interviews for this research was due to the deep nature of collaboration that was
known to take place amongst LEDs at Design39. The focus group approach to answering
questions was more conversational, and LEDs built upon each other’s ideas and highlighted core
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strengths and abilities that each LED brought to the experience. This was a theme that carried
through all the focus group interviews.
No one mentioned in discussing their knowledge assets an outside coach as having come
in to train them in doing the work they do. Rather, they all deeply held the belief that educators
are inherent design thinkers, however without the time and space to collaborate, plan and reflect
with one another, they cannot fully come into their role as learning experience designers. They
all described their knowledge as something that comes not just from professional development
but from living the design principles on a daily basis in their own practice which further allows
them to design and develop how to integrate it into their instruction. A shift in a culture that is
isolated to one that is integrated extended beyond just people, and the interviews highlighted that
ultimately this shift in culture is what allows for the development of an interdisciplinary
curriculum where subjects are integrated into learning tasks instead of existing in silos. This
knowledge and empowerment in seeing themselves as design thinkers has also given the LEDs a
greater sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose which Daniel Pink (2009) three elements that
give individuals the “drive,” to motivate themselves in the workplace. With collaboration being
an essential part of their learning and reflection process, continuing to build time to empathize,
learn and understand one another is an ongoing area they are continuously working on and a
process they are continuing to refine in terms of communication and the physical spaces within
which they come together to work.
Findings of Assumed Motivation Influences
As Rueda (2011) points out, consideration is rarely given to the possibility that
individuals have the knowledge of what is required but do not have the motivation to carry out
the tasks. Understanding the motivational influences on performance is critical when identifying
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how to support teacher capacity to utilize design thinking as a framework for defining and
designing a new grammar of school. While many initiatives begin strong, they can often slow
down or cause frustration leading to distrust. For that reason, it was essential to understand three
elements – active choice, persistence and mental effort, to ensure that the motivation to integrate
design thinking was not only instigated but sustained. This section shares the findings related to
the assumed motivation assets of the learning experience designers at Design39. Each of these
influences was validated between the observations, survey and interview questions, suggesting
that the LEDs have the motivation to integrate design thinking and define and design a new
grammar of school. Table 8 highlights the assumed motivation assets and whether or not they
were validated through the data collection process. In addition, while three assumed motivation
assets on performance were initially identified through prior knowledge and research, two strong
motivation assets emerged through the data collection effort and are designated as newly
identified assets below.
Table 8
Assumed Motivation Assets
Assumed Motivation Assets Existing Asset
Newly
Identified Asset
LED’s utility value for teaching design thinking X
LED’s self-efficacy about teaching design thinking X
LEDs mastery orientation about teaching design thinking X
LED’s see the development of social-emotional skills X
LEDs collaboration with other LEDs and with learners X

LED’s Utility Value for Teaching Design Thinking
With the number of trends, strategies and initiatives promoted to prepare students with
the skills and mindsets to thrive, it can be challenging to take the time to discern between which
ones are effective in producing results. While many schools believe the answer lies in
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technology, executives surveyed by LinkedIn Learning (2020) said the top three skills employees
need to learn are leadership and management, creative problem solving and design thinking and
communication. While technology can amplify the development of these skills, as Attewell
(2001) highlights, there exists a strong digital use divide, where the actual learning tasks must be
changed; only then can be technology be used to amplify learning. This supports the
longstanding idea that in today’s world the core skills that humans need to complement machines
are complex problem solving and communication, both learned through design thinking (Autor,
Levy & Murnane, 2014). Today’s world needs individuals who can solve difficult challenges and
dream up creative and innovative ideas that technologies cannot replicate (LinkedIn Learning,
2020).
The Skills and Mindsets Needed to Thrive
The transformation the LEDs see in the skills and mindsets their learners are mastering
fuels their intrinsic motivation to persist in integrating design thinking into their curriculum.
Furthermore, these results increase their self-efficacy about their ability to integrate design
thinking driving them to show up each and every day for collaboration with their grade level
teams to continue in this direction. The survey results, as detailed in Figure 3, shared that over
90% of the LEDs see the value of design thinking in developing the skills of creativity, problem
finding, collaboration and communication.

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Figure 5
Design Thinking is an Approach That Prepares Students With the Following Skills

In FG1, the LEDs shared an example of creativity, problem finding, communication and
collaboration, where a group of students had identified a challenge, and upon having done their
empathy mapping, they went to the principal to share their idea. As an LED in FG1 shared, “I
don’t think this is something that you see happen everywhere, the kids they are finding problems,
they see them all around them and they have an idea and they believe they can do it, so we
believe we can do it, they say look I’ve done my empathy mapping and they lay out and present
the data and their idea and the principal just says go try it” (LED 5). In another interview, LED
22 shared a similar experience saying that, “their creativity is enhanced, their ideas are validated,
just because they are little doesn’t mean their ideas don’t matter, they are heard and listened to
and it gives them confidence to be verbal even in an adult group.”
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Neither Agree nor Disagree
In addition to seeing the value of design thinking in preparing students with skills, the
LED’s also reported on how design thinking prepares students with the mindsets needed to
succeed. The survey results, as detailed in Figure 6, highlight to what degree the LEDs see the
various mindsets demonstrated by the learners at Design39. Creative confidence, empathy and
learning from failure were seen as the strongest mindsets being developed, followed by iterating,
making, comfort with ambiguity and then optimism.
Figure 6
Design Thinking is an Approach That Prepares Students With the Following Mindsets

LED 12 shared how at Design39 the learners are comfortable being in a vulnerable
situation where they try new things and fix them because the design process has taught them it is
ok to come up with ideas, try them out, figure it out, and if doesn’t work, they can go back to the
drawing board. These examples highlight the active choice, persistence and mental effort
sustained by LEDs as they saw the results they were gaining from redesigning the learning
experiences using design thinking. In addition, these experiences deepen the norms and routines
they have in place such as their collaboration time as they continue to refine their practice. In
Strongly Agree
Agree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
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seeing the results with their learners, the skills and mindsets being strengthened through the
experiences they design, the LEDs are motivated to continue their hard work with integrating
design thinking. LED 13 noted here that while they see this happening now at Design39, this
was something that they did not see at Design39 six years ago. Learning from failure was a
mindset that the LEDs felt was essential to developing the skills such as creativity, collaboration,
communication and problem finding. LED 18 shared that it is the learners who are often
encouraging each other to take their ideas further, “We hear them saying, ‘Where do you want to
go next?’ They fail constantly and they rebound constantly, whereas many kids would not be
comfortable they know there is no end point, they are learning these skills and mindsets every
day whether it be through math, social studies science everything.”
The reinforcement of their persistence and mental effort towards tasks involved in
redesigning learning are continuously reinforced through the value and results they see when
their plans move into action and scale across campus. When asked how they reflect on seeing
these interactions to design ongoing learning experiences, the LEDs shared how they had an
experience called Maker39 that began with 3rd grade that they decided to expand to include more
grade levels. LED 13 shared how Maker 39 was an entrepreneurship program where they design
their own business. FG3 shared that their favorite word is “pivot” and that they are always
asking, ‘who is pivoting?’ because it is essential that the learners know that not everything works
the first time and they work through those really tough choices. They keep practicing and as they
design they realize that it’s ok to give up on an idea because they know they can move to another
one. This was a lesson learned not just by the students, but by the LEDs themselves as they
integrated design thinking, trying new things in their teaching practice. The growth mindset they
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saw with their learners and within themselves motivated them to keep going deeper with design
thinking.
There is an overwhelming amount of literature and content about why and what schools
need to do to prepare learners for the world they will graduate into, yet the how is often missing.
This direct correlation between seeing the depth to which their learners are demonstrating the
trending skills and mindsets identified by the World Economic Forum as a result of their
collaborative work integrating design thinking reinforces the motivation amongst the LEDs. The
results of their effort lead them to continuously make the active choice to collaborate and persist
in defining and designing a new grammar of school.
From Isolation to Integration of Content
In addition to the development of skills such as problem finding, communication and
creativity, and mindsets such as learning from failure, empathy and creative confidence, the
LEDs also shared the value they see in design thinking to move from isolation to integration of
content outlined by the standards. Being able to design how the expectations of the curriculum
can be interwoven utilizing design thinking presented a significant value to the LEDs when
investing the time and motivation to sustain changing traditional teaching practices. As LED 8
shared, “When I think about instruction, I think about how many standards can I merge into an
experience. Many of the standards overlap. You can’t integrate alone, you need the different lens
of STEM, history, English. They shouldn’t say this is this subject or this is that, they should have
the flow throughout the day and that’s what we can create when we are working together.”
This example presents a fundamental tenet of engaging in design-based work – content is
not taught in isolation, nor do people work in isolation. In an analogy presented by David Perkins
(2008), he shares how in the game of baseball we don’t spend a month learning just how to catch
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and then another month learning just how to bat and another month learning how to throw.
Instead of isolating each area, all of the knowledge, skills and mindsets needed to thrive as a
baseball player are integrated and connected to a game as a whole. Learning experiences, Perkins
says, should be conducted in the same way to allow for deeper learning (Fine & Mehta, 2019).
Seeing this actualized in their work each and every day with their learners was a notable value
shared by the LEDs. Not only did the integration of design thinking lead to deeper learning, the
LEDs were developing a nuanced understanding of their learners’ individual growth and
development, further increasing their intrinsic motivation to persist in cross-curricular
collaboration with other LEDs.
From Grading for Completion to Grading for Growth
Throughout the focus group interviews, the LEDs commented how integrating design
thinking allows not only for deeper learning but also for the learners to have a more personalized
learning and assessment experience because where they are in their learning journey may vary
from student to student. This leads to another value derived from integrating design thinking that
was shared by many of the LEDs - a shift in grading practices, moving away from grading for
completion with numbers and letters and towards grading for growth based on competencies.
Darling-Hammond (1994) shares that changes in assessment are only meaningful when there is a
change in how assessments are used. LED 4 shared that grading for growth allows not just the
LED, but also the learner themselves, to see themselves as a whole child, stating, “Understanding
the whole child, not just standards, and what are they capable of - not what they can’t do but
what CAN they do, this is what we focus on and that’s then what they focus on.” LED 17 in
another interview shared a similar sentiment emphasizing that at Design39, “we focus on the
power of yet so it’s not I can’t do this… it’s I can’t do this yet…” During an observation of a
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CGI (cognitively guided instruction) math lesson, the students were presented with the following
problem, “There were 125 kids in 3rd grade and the principal gave each 9 tickets for helping out?
How many tickets did the principal given out in total?” Instead of having the students complete
the answer on a worksheet, they did their work in journals and then came up to the board to share
the different ways in which they had approached the problem. The variety in approaches and
thinking was fascinating and throughout the process the LED was prompting the students with
questions such as, “did you use multiplication or addition,” “did anyone else use this strategy?”
“did anyone use their brain in a different way?”
Experiences like the math example demonstrated the value that the LEDs see with design
thinking in how their learners are interacting with content and demonstrating the skills and
mindsets the LEDs strive to enhance and develop within them. A significant “aha” moment in
the value of design thinking for shifting assessment practices came when they realized that
integrating social-emotional learning provided the students with the intrinsic motivation to learn
compared to the extrinsic rewards such as an exit ticket to maintain control. The LEDs
highlighted that at Design39, learning has become not just about compliance and completion or a
letter or number grade, rather it has become about what did we learn and what will we change for
the next time, and that this strengthens learners skills and mindsets, allowing them to know that
they are in control of their learning experience and providing them with the coping strategies to
navigate complex challenges to which the solutions are unknown. The LEDs all echoed a similar
idea that Design39 was working to promote learner agency, having the students identify
challenges and articulate solutions as they pinpoint the areas that they wish to improve upon. The
LEDs see the value in the mindset shift, they see the value in the integration of subjects, they see
the value in a different type of assessment, they see the value in the development of socio-
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emotional skills and the value it offers in increased collaboration. This value gives them
motivation to continue investing in these practices and increases their own self-efficacy about
defining and designing a new grammar of school.
LEDs Self-Efficacy About Teaching Design Thinking
Initiatives in education today are commonly referred to by educators as “one more thing,”
that often leads to teacher burnout (Trust et al., 2016). Whether LEDs were new to design
thinking or had been practicing it for multiple years, the belief that design thinking was
instrumental in creating learning environments and experiences, for both themselves and
children, to thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens was unanimous. While there was
agreement that design thinking was an excellent approach to designing learning experiences for
all learners, it required a strong collaborative effort. When interviewed, LEDs, with the
exception of two who had been teaching at Design39 since the start of their career, mentioned
that prior to coming to Design39 they had felt isolated and overwhelmed and unable to design
the experiences they had desired. However, at Design39, they felt that being able to engage in
the design thinking process themselves through collaboration time and other opportunities
allowed them to focus on their strengths and create a more enriched and relevant learning
experience for all learners. When asked, “what do you feel makes you successful in your work at
Design39?” each LED responded by saying something about, “the people here.” LED 9 shared
how, “before if I wanted to do a project I had no thought partners, I had no one to bounce ideas
off of, yeah I could ask my principal and they were supportive but I was on an island and it felt
so much more difficult.”

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What Is Your Superpower?
A frequent word used throughout the interviews and heard during the observations was,
“superpower.” This term was not only used amongst LEDs but used with students as well. A
foundational step in enhancing the self-efficacy of LEDs was in establishing that everyone has a
unique superpower, a strength that they bring to the table. The topic of superpowers came up in
all the interviews and LED 2 captured the sentiment by sharing, “we are capable of all things and
if we had to do them we could, but our superpowers highlight what we are energized by and
what brings us joy. It allows us to develop a deeper sense of empathy with one another because
we understand that ok in collaboration you need this, I may not need that but by knowing this
about each other we can help give each other what we need.” In the 2019 school year, to deepen
the understanding of superpowers, Design39 had their LEDs take the Emergentics test. The
Emergenetics approach is utilized to strengthen team performance by helping people recognize
and apply their thinking and behavior patterns. A challenge when integrating new practices into
any organization is labeling people in alignment with the diffusion of innovation bell curve, a
theory developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962. He explains how an idea gains momentum over time
and spreads amongst a group placing people into five adopter categories – innovators, early
adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. When the culture shifts from one being seen
as better than the other to a culture where each of those perspectives is valued, everyone
develops a stronger sense of self-efficacy and believes they have something to contribute instead
of feeling as if they are not enough because they don’t have a skill that someone else on the team
does.

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LEDs Mastery Orientation About Teaching Design Thinking
Mastery orientation towards a task allows one the motivation to continually take on a
challenge while learning a new competency. All of the LEDs shared that collaboration time gave
them the confidence and motivation to continually deepen design thinking practices amongst
themselves and with their learners. Figure 7 details their collaboration time, and when asked how
often they meet together to collaborate with their team, over 66% of the LEDs responded by
saying daily to several times a day.
Figure 7
How Often do you Collaborate With Your Grade Level Team?

The design and meaning of teams were a differentiation noted by many LEDs that drove
their intrinsic motivation to collaborate with their colleagues. LED 5 shared that the word team
means something different at Design39 compared to other places they had worked. FG2 also
shared a similar theme that how when they work together, and an idea is on the table, it’s not one
person’s idea, it’s “our” idea and we are here to work through this together. FG2 also said that,
“team here and collaboration does not mean we are being best friends it means can I trust you to
show up and do your best.” LED 7 shared how they were even co-teaching now at Design39 with
someone who they had taught next to for years at another school. The LEDs at Design39 are
committed to continuous mastery towards their goals through a variety of different learning
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experiences that they brought back to share with their teams. From reading, to listening, to
podcasts, to attending different events, their ongoing commitment to design their own learning
and bring it back to reflect and share was integral to the work they did on a daily basis.
The word purpose was a word that was mentioned by every LED as their intrinsic
motivation towards mastery orientation when talking about the work they do at Design39. There
was a core belief held that they were doing work here that was beyond who they were as
individuals, and that they were making a difference each and every day. It was a deep sense of
purpose that they felt in the work that they did and in the work that they were doing daily with
their learners. LED 5 echoed a sentiment shared by many, “we’re changing the world, and this is
what has driven me through the growing pains, we’re changing the world not I, WE.”
While collaboration was the most significant component of what allowed the LEDs to
thrive in the work they were doing, it was also one that was an ongoing struggle that they are
continuously working to better design for everyone. LED 1 shared, “we still struggle with
collaboration, and understanding what it really is. It isn’t just sharing, there are higher levels of
abilities.” Being comfortable with your own different abilities in comparison to others made it
essential to be vulnerable, an area that as humans we all struggle with. However, it was this
emerging culture of vulnerability that ultimately allowed the LEDs to continue mastery of their
craft in collaboration with others to integrate design thinking to define and design grammar of
school.
The Importance of Having a Growth Mindset
Their dedication to nurturing a mastery orientation, or a growth mindset, not only within
themselves but within their students as well was evident throughout the interviews and
observations. LED 14 shared, “when another LED feels like they are not good enough we remind
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them you are here for a reason and we are there to support them as they take that risk.” An
example of this was shared in FC1 as two LEDs shared a story about an annual conference that
takes place on campus called 39X. Last year, one of the LEDs was asked to present on a topic,
and they were very nervous and wanted to decline. They shared how the thought of it, as they
were telling the story, brought back the nerves, however it was a moment of growth for them as
another LED stepped in to encourage and work with them. “You are here for a reason,” they told
me, “you have something great to share, we all have something to share.” Everyone interviewed
mentioned vulnerability as being a core element in their growth and mastery over time. In
particular, LED 4 shared how they felt safe when they did not know how to do something and
knew they had someone to rely on for support, “that’s what team means here.”
The LEDs at Design 39 demonstrated they are motivated by a mastery orientation about
teaching design thinking. At the same time, the challenge to continuously grow, to continuously
be better, is a balance that the LEDs struggle with as many place increasing demands on
themselves to innovate. The principal said, “I have to continuously remind them that we are
doing enough, our extraordinary is other people’s ordinary.” Slowing down is critical to being
able to assess the impact of the innovation on practice so as to iterate in the right areas to sustain
and develop the grammar of school designed by LEDs at Design39.
Synthesis of Results and Findings for Motivation Influences
Seeing the radical transformation in their own teaching practice as LEDs, and witnessing
their learner’s creativity, problem solving, communication and other trending skills and mindsets
develop, increases the value for the ongoing integration of design thinking. Recognizing the
value increases their intrinsic motivation to keep changing traditional teaching methods. Their
ability to sustain this work comes from the deep nature of their daily collaboration and the trust
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and psychological safety that has been developed over time. Within this environment, LEDs are
able to identify and feel confident about coming forward with their superpower, doing work to
contribute that they are motivated by.
People, passion and purpose enhance motivation amongst the LEDs. This is the
intersection that LEDs meet at to collaborate as they integrate design thinking to enhance the
knowledge, skills and mindsets of not only their learners, but themselves as well. Making the
active choice to engage in tasks, persisting in the face of adversity and dedicating the mental
effort to learning is essential to sustained motivation when implementing a new practice.
However, alongside knowledge and motivation there are organizational structurers in place to
support the work the LEDs do through dedicated sacred daily collaboration time, a culture of
empathy and personalized professional development opportunities.
Findings of Assumed Organization Influences
The culture and leadership within an organization go hand in hand and as Peter Drucker
(1959) states, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The vision for what Design39 believes in is
seen immediately upon entering the school, “Life ready thought leaders elevating humanity.”
Ultimately, an organization’s success and ability to work towards mastery of goals and the
desired culture depends upon the individuals within it and you can see the vision being
implemented as you observe the learning experiences, view the learner’s work on the wall, in
conversation with learners and LEDs, and in how they use their time and space. This section
shares the findings related to the assumed organization assets, as shown in Table 8, that support
the LED’s at Design39. Each of these assets was validated between the observations, survey and
interview questions. It is important to note that a resounding theme was, “it wasn’t always this
way.” The assets shared below are a result of six years of hard work, complex challenges that are
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confronted on a daily basis and a deep commitment to defining and designing a new grammar of
school.
Table 9
Assumed Organization Assets
Assumed Organization Assets Existing Assets New Assets
Design39 cultivates a culture of innovation among LEDs to
change traditional methods of teaching.
X

Design39 provides professional development to LEDs, so they can
continue to enhance and develop their ability to integrate design
thinking into the curriculum.
X

Design39 created a schedule that allows for the integration of
design thinking into the curriculum.
X

Design39 Cultivates a Culture of Innovation Among LEDs to Change Traditional Methods
of Teaching
The demands of the knowledge economy require higher levels of creativity and
collaboration at work; however, most management systems are designed to create compliance
(Gower & Jamieson, 2018). In educational organizations, not only is creativity and collaboration
required of workers, it is also expected that they can design experiences that meet at the
intersection of the development of knowledge, skills and mindsets. In an era of standards-based
education, pacing guides and the continuous addition of “one more thing,” many educators feel
overwhelmed and unsupported. As discussed in the earlier sections, almost all the LEDs shared
how in work experiences prior to Design39, while they had ideas, they felt as if they were alone
on their own island. When interviewed, almost every LED shared how at Design39 they felt
trusted, they felt safe, they felt vulnerable and above all they felt like they were treated as
professionals. In fact, when surveyed about how supported LEDs felt by their leadership when
trying new methods of teaching, an overwhelming 94% agreed or strongly agreed.
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Figure 8
I Feel Supported by My Leadership To Try New Teaching Methods

LED 7 who was a founding member of the Design39 campus shared that it was the open
communication style that nurtured a strong culture of innovation through the relationship of
support between leadership and LEDs. LED 7 shared, “We have a very open communication
system with our leadership, and they take feedback really well. We don’t spend lots of time on
what and how we say things, we can just say we need to stop this so we can be the best people
we can be.” This sentiment was shared campus wide. This feeling of support extends beyond
leadership and is a sentiment that is felt amongst colleagues as well. As LED 7 shared, “because
of the history of school, educators do not trust each other. We can walk into each other’s rooms
here. This is so important. That took a while for us to get to where we are now.” LED 8, another
founding member, further elaborated on this in talking about the power of joint decision making,
“in the beginning, and now, we were involved in all the decisions, when you are involved you
have ownership and you are interested in revising and making it better.”

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The Diffusion of Innovation
When examining the motivation influences on LEDs to redesign learning, Maker39 was
repeatedly referenced. The story to how it began is another example of how the leadership
support the LEDS in designing a culture of innovation. LED 20 shared how during the interview
for the LED position they had shared a passion for wanting to start a craft fair. A few weeks into
beginning at Design39, the principal encouraged her by saying, “Hey remember you wanted to
do that craft fair, let’s do it! That was the start of Maker39, kids use a seed idea, something they
are passionate about and building out those ideas. KG/1 Students wanted to do it too. It’s really
developed over the years.”
The culture of innovation at Design39 thrives through their culture of collaboration. Of
all the areas, collaboration was one that was an ongoing design challenge where they are in
iteration and always testing new methods and groupings. However, as those interviewed
acknowledged and as the survey data demonstrated, collaboration is particularly important when
trying new methods in any industry and is a daily part of the work LEDs engage in. A culture of
collaboration has led to a move away from isolating content into subject blocks toward an
interdisciplinary approach to learning. When describing how this was happening in middle
school, LED 8 shared, “you can’t integrate alone, you need the different lens of STEM, History
and English. They shouldn’t say this is this subject or this is that, they should have the flow
throughout the day.” Time and again the phrase, “you can’t do this alone,” was used. LED 9 also
shared a similar sentiment, “If I’m doing a research paper in science, how can we teach MLA
format in English, you have to find as much overlap as possible to integrate and you can’t do this
alone.” Feeling supported by their leadership to take risks and experiment with different teaching
methods fosters within the LEDs a sense of autonomy. As the LEDs engage in these lessons,
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they are constantly iterating based on the outcome of the day. Whether it’s in person, group chats
or other online platforms, they are collaborating on a daily basis, fostering a culture of
innovation.
The Value of Psychological Safety Amongst Teams
It was evident from the interviews and observations that the daily collaboration practice
and culture at Design39 had created a culture of psychological safety amongst the LEDs that
greatly enhanced their self-efficacy when integrating design thinking. This evidence reinforces a
finding from Project Aristotle led by Harvard researcher Amy Edmonson (Edmonson, 1999) and
Google on how to design effective teams. Oftentimes the assumption is that you need your
highest performers to come together to have successful team performance with strong outcomes,
however they found that it was not the level of performance that differentiated successful teams
from non-successful teams, rather it was the behavioral norms the team developed.
The establishment of norms to create a culture of vulnerability and psychological safety
was a theme mentioned throughout the interviews and noted during the observations. Many of
the LEDs attributed their self-efficacy to using the design thinking framework in their planning
when designing learning experiences. As a result, they were experiencing design thinking
firsthand alongside their learners, creating a truly dynamic and holistic learner-centered
environment. As LED 23 noted, “we often come and think this is my work, my classroom, my
students, design thinking makes it more about us, it’s more about how can we make the work
better making it less about us as individuals and more about us as community.” LED 14 shared
another norm to help the group overcome the fear of failure and to align everyone’s expectations
when starting a new project is by identifying all the things that could go wrong, “by
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acknowledging these we take the fear away, then we talk about what we want success to look
like.”
The establishment of norms and behaviors is a practice that exists between the LEDs and
one that extends into the classroom as well between the LEDs and their learners. LED 21 shared,
“we have norms and working agreements. It’s a shift because we are flattening the role of the
teacher and we are working together with each other, it’s not my classroom and your classroom
it’s our classroom and our ideas. Not teacher directed, we help the kids to work things out,
establish norms and new structures to help them see they are part of the learning and classroom,
and the teacher is the support.” As identified in Project Aristotle, the LEDs mentioned two
critical elements that need to be established so that everyone on the team can develop a sense of
self-efficacy, believing in their capacity to contribute to the task through their superpower and a
culture of autonomy and trust.
The Impact of Autonomy and Trust on Professional Growth
Autonomy was consistently mentioned across all interviews and was evident from the
observations and different teaching styles and activities that were taking place across campus.
LED 7 shared, “Rule 33 in Philz Coffee is hiring the right people and set them free to do their
best - this is why it works here. There isn’t anyone coming to say things like, what standard are
you working on it’s not on the board. Those things kill anything creative. When admin come,
they are coming to experience what is happening.” Freedom and autonomy were themes
mentioned throughout all the interviews. In another example LED 19 shared, “We have a
tremendous amount of freedom and trust, I’ve never had that before I’m trusted that the decisions
I’m making are in the best interests of our students - I had never felt that before.”
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Empowering LEDs with a sense of autonomy is not only essential to integrating design
thinking and experimenting with novel teaching methods moreover, it is essential to the
professional growth of the LEDs. As LED 19 continued they shared, “Freedom to try even if we
fail - try and be creative has opened up our world - as an educator and as a human.” Changing
the grammar of school is an arduous task, one which the history of progressive education reform
movements that were highlighted in the literature review have proven do not scale and sustain
themselves. Lichtman (2019) notes that to thrive in today’s world, schools need a culture of
radical connectivity, bringing together people and ideas. The culture of innovation at Design39 is
built on a foundation of trust and collaboration. A community where diversity of ideas,
personalities and skills is nurtured and valued. The culture at Design39 marks a radical shift in
education organizations from power and decisions that are traditionally made at the district level
to a culture of radical connectivity amongst the individuals who make up the organization and
their ideas.
Design39 Provides Professional Development to LEDs, So They Can Continue to Enhance
and Develop Their Ability to Integrate Design Thinking into the Curriculum
Design thinking was not a methodology that any of the LEDs had experience with as a
learner, nor had any LED learned about design thinking during their teacher education program.
As a result, understanding how they came to learn to integrate design thinking and how they
continue to deepen their understanding was of great interest in sharing with other organizations
looking to adopt this promising practice. One of the characteristics of The Fourth Industrial
Revolution is the pace of change (Friedman, 2016). One of the unique qualities of the LEDs was
their passion for pursuing learning opportunities together as individuals instead of relying on
provided professional development from the organization. In traditional districts and schools,
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educators often gather together for professional development, where an outside speaker comes in
to share knowledge on a particular topic. When examining trending skills for 2022, the World
Economic Forum identified active learning, complex problem solving, emotional intelligence
and others that are essential not only for learners in schools today but for everyone. Choice and
personalized learning experiences are not just for the students but for everyone, adults included,
creating a community of avid lifelong learners. As LED 7 shared, “we are constantly learning,
we are all googling and sharing what we are learning. I come from the lens of “So what.” I dig
for the connection between things that will make a difference.”
From Provided to Purpose Driven Professional Development
While there are organized professional development opportunities at Design39, they are
personalized to the needs of the LEDs. There were two professional development experiences
mentioned during all interviews that the LEDs said supported their ability to deeply integrate
design thinking and refine their new grammar of school. The first was Project Beep Beep. The
LEDs shared that this began one day when the principal rented a van and a group of educators set
off to do some visits at other education and industry organizations in the San Diego area. The
group found this to be so beneficial that from there on this became an integrated part of their
regular professional development. Asked how this was funded, LED 19 shared not only a
response but also spoke to the importance of this experience and how it empowered them further
as educators, “We would go to so many expensive conferences and said, ‘we’re the experts, let’s
learn from each other.’ And then we use those funds to build our own internal practice, it funds
our travel program.” As LED 4 shared, “We are not one size fits all and believing that we are
professionals, we are at different stages in our career and personal growth. We do this with kids
too.” In addition to Project Beep Beep there is daily collaboration time and weekly meetings on
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Wednesday for cross collaboration based on different issues that are arising. The organization’s
support of experiences such as Project Beep Beep reinforced their motivation about why they are
changing traditional teaching practices. For example, LED 16 shared how when they visited
Apple, Google and HP, they had noticed that their employees are rewarded for saying no and
understanding when to recognize an idea is not working and to move on. They also shared how
HP engineers in particular chunk out their projects, where they have check-in points that serve as
their pivot points. LED 10 shared how this environment empowers learners with an
understanding that this is a campus where they can create and do. As questions sparked by the
learners curiosity arise it “brings us together to think about how we can design interdisciplinary
experiences that allow them to go deeper with the knowledge, skills and mindsets.”
Instead of a top down approach, the culture at Design39 evokes a culture of radical
connectivity built on autonomy, trust and purpose amongst the LEDs where they can design their
own professional learning and come together to share and build on ideas (Lichtman, 2019). LED
5 highlighted, “learning and developing our craft as LEDs isn’t something that happens once a
month on a Tuesday at the district office, it’s happening all day, every day with the people we
work with, the places we visit and the resources we share with one another.” As a result, they
have an internal drive to continue mastery, uncover needs, and continuously learn how to design
solutions to those needs. For example, when reflecting on the difference between a more
traditional work environment and Design39, LED 22 shared, “Before it was the leader telling us
what to do, here the model is really flipped. Our principal is here to get the roadblocks out of the
way so we can do what we need to do.” The culture at Design39 says that LEDs are respected as
professionals, and as a result, they take ownership over the work they do. As LED 22
highlighted, “Change is happening all over, they are making technical change not systematic
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change. You can add devices but if you don’t change your practice then nothing will change.
You have to look at the entire school not just the classroom level. Where is the trust, can
educators do something, or do they have to get permission?”
When asked what advice would you give to anyone joining Design39, LED 23 shared,
“There is so much trust. Don’t be afraid to have a big idea because you have people who will
help you take that idea, make it better and make it happen.” Design39 is not a place where
educators wait to be told what to do and when to learn. Rather, the culture at Design39
encourages and trusts the LEDs to personalize their learning and development as professionals,
to seek out the resources and experiences that will enhance and develop their ability to define
and design a new grammar of school and supports the LEDs by providing the time and space to
dream, share and execute on their ideas.
Design39 Creates a Schedule That Allows for the Integration of Design Thinking Into the
Curriculum
One of the areas Tyack and Tobin (1994) identified as being part of the grammar of
schooling was the schedule. The traditional 50-minute period schedule presents the challenge of
moving towards an interdisciplinary and inquiry-based model of learning. Moreover, its rigidity
does not allow for deeper learning, flexibility to adapt to the needs of learners or the opportunity
to collaborate with colleagues. The survey and interview questions both demonstrated that the
integrated daily collaboration time for LEDs is critical to the work they do to integrate design
thinking into the curriculum. For 50 minutes each morning, beginning at 8am, the LEDs have
dedicated collaboration time. It is here that they engage in design thinking as they design
learning experiences. These 50 minutes each day allows the LEDs to adapt to the needs of their
learners, to reflect and iterate upon the experiences they design, and, above all, it is here in this
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time that they support one another. There are no rotating classes at Design39. Instead, the K-8
day runs from 8:50am – 2:55pm. Based upon the learning experience being designed, the
students move between Homeroom, Integrated Learning Time (ILT), Deep Dives, Explorations
and Minds in Motion. Every student at Design39 has a homeroom. Here, they have the
opportunity to meet up with the same teacher and peers every day. ILT is where they link
curriculums for connected understanding and purposeful application of content and skills. The
integration of content was a topic brought up in every interview when asked about their ability to
integrate design thinking. LED 8 highlighted a sentiment shared by many across the upper
elementary and middle school, “when I think about instruction, I think about how many
standards can I merge into an experience. Many of the standards overlap. You can’t integrate
alone, you need the different lens of STEM, History and English. They shouldn’t say this is this
subject or this is that, they should have the flow throughout the day.” Deep Dives can vary from
fashion design to computer coding. It is a time where the students can extend on their passions in
an academic setting. Explorations are a time of day where kids can try new things, dabble in
different interest areas, and explore potential interests in passions. Both Deep Dives and
Explorations not only allow for the students to discover and engage in a passion, it allows for the
LEDs to do so as well. In Minds in Motion students can choose a variety of different options
from Hip Hop to Lacrosse to Tae Kwon Do.
The schedule is yet another example of autonomy that the LEDs have at Design39. It is
this culture of collaboration and shared purpose that allows for big ideas to flourish and grow. As
LED 8 shared, “we have created the schedule. We have decided when we want to do things and
when you do that you are more flexible because you see the big picture. We create the picture, if
we create it, we can solve it, to fix it or change it.” There are often times when the schedule does
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need to be adapted for different grade levels. In one example LED 9 shared, “we build things that
the students need. 6th grade needs a homeroom, so we made it. 7 and 8 do not need it so they
don’t have it. We design what the user needs.” In another example, LED 7 shared how they had
some challenges with the 8th grade schedule, “We had a challenge with 8th grade. We changed
the schedule after semester 1. It’s not mother may I, it’s here is the problem how might we solve
for it.”
Synthesis of Results and Findings for Organizational Influences
It wasn’t always this way. This was a theme echoed by the LEDs and the principal as
they discussed how the culture of Design39 came to be. With change taking place at an
exponential rate and routine work being outsourced, organizations need their individuals to be
self-directed learners who are driven by intrinsic motivation (Zhou, 1998). Zhou (1988) defines
intrinsic motivation as tasks that an individual is energized by. External rewards often fail to
improve people’s engagement with tasks (Deci, 1971). In their cognitive evaluation theory
(CET), Deci and Ryan (1985) outline that people need to feel competent and experience
autonomy to develop intrinsic motivation. Pink (2009) further outlines intrinsic motivation as
being comprised of three factors – autonomy, mastery and purpose. While Design39 has many
partners who provide support, guidance and collaboration, the LEDs are trusted and given the
autonomy they need to seek out professional learning experiences and to design learning
experiences they believe their learners need. Many of them mentioned that they had never
received this type of autonomy before. The transition away from traditional evaluations towards
a culture of trust made them feel as if they were professionals. The interviews and the
observations revealed a strong empathetic relationship between the leadership and the LEDs at
Design39. A relationship that started with trust that the LEDs, in collaboration with one another,
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can develop the knowledge, skills and mindsets needed to define and design a new grammar of
school.
Emerging Themes
Knowledge: Educators Must Recognize Themselves as Learning Experience Designers
In discussing what design thinking meant to the LEDs, they shared how they gravitated to
the model because of the shared nature of the design process and teaching and learning.
Furthermore, many of the LEDs shared how the design thinking process provided them with the
vocabulary and structure to frame their work as they sought to define the work they were doing
to transform traditional education practices. The idea that learning experiences need to be
designed to accommodate the needs of different learners is not new. In Understanding by Design
(McTighe & Wiggins, 2011), the authors presented a three-stage framework called, “Backwards
Design,” to guide the design of curriculum, assessment and instruction. For this reason, at
Design39 they merged the fields of education and design where instead of calling their educators
“teachers” they call them LEDs – learning experience designers. Throughout the interviews, the
LEDs identified educators as inherent design thinkers due to the shared human-centered focus of
working with users, in this case the students and parents, ongoing design challenges with cyclical
learning tasks involving testing, feedback and iteration, and a design mindset to address the wide
variety of complex problems within their individual classrooms and across education
organizations.
In the Backwards Design framework, there are three stages they recommend educators
design for. Stage one is where you identify desired results, asking what should students know,
understand and be able to do? In stage two, the focus is on assessment, asking how we will know
if students have achieved the desired results from stage one. In stage three, the focus is on
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planning learning experiences and instruction, asking how we will support learners as they come
to understand ideas and processes. When observing and hearing from the LEDs as to how they
go about designing learning, they are able to backwards design with the needs of each individual
learner in mind, creating a learner-centered environment. The LEDs spoke to their ability to
design a learner-centered environment where the focus is on learning: what the student is
learning, how the student is learning, the conditions under which the student is learning, whether
the student is retaining and applying the learning and how current learning positions the student
for future learning (Weimar, 2002).
Motivation: Seeing the Value of Design Thinking
Ultimately, innovation is designing new solutions for new challenges. The Fourth
Industrial Revolution presents all industries with complex challenges that will need to be solved
for. While these challenges will affect industries across the globe, the solutions will vary based
upon the context and community. Solutions to existing and emerging complex challenges will
have to demonstrate value and progress towards the goal to sustain motivation amongst
stakeholders involved. Solutions cannot be solved in isolation, nor can there be a one size fits all
approach. Rather, each community will have to examine the larger complex challenge and
identify a solution for their community and seeing the results will reinforce their active choice,
persistence and mental effort in working towards the goals. As Covid-19 has starkly unveiled,
there are deep inequities embedded within education system. To solve for these challenges,
leaders will have to identify the problem and empathize with stakeholders, especially educators,
to understand their fears, motivations, challenges and desires and share the value and results in
both qualitative and quantitative formats that demonstrate there is growth towards the goals. In
addition, LEDs must be provided with the tools such as Emergenetics to become more self-aware
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about their thinking and behavioral patterns so that they can collaborate more effectively. Only
when solutions are designed for individual stakeholders within a collective community can there
be true innovation. In this environment, as a result of seeing the value, the solutions that emerge
do not follow a top down approach, rather they involve everyone invested in the continuous
process of growth and change. Moving away from a top down approach and placing more trust
and control in the hands of educators will allow change to scale. It is the LEDs and the students
who interact on a daily basis, and it is critical that LEDs see the value of design thinking in the
interaction with their learners and within themselves as professionals. In addition, they need the
organizational support to provide the time and space to develop a culture of psychological safety
so that they can trust one another and collaborate to define and design a new grammar of school
with design thinking.
Organization: Using Empathy to Create a Culture of Innovation
It wasn’t always this way,” was a theme throughout the interviews. A challenge when
creating change is helping stakeholders understand why. Groff (2019) shares that there are six
different types of loss that are experienced when navigating change – loss of control, pride,
narrative, time competence and familiarity. Design thinking serves as a valuable tool for
sustained change because it begins with empathy, allowing organizations to listen to the needs of
their stakeholders (Brown, 2007). LED 14 shared how six years ago the greatest challenge they
faced was the community and parents, “When you do things in a new way people do not trust
what you do, it takes a few years before the tide turns, even your biggest supporters have doubts
and reaching a place where we have developed more trust has taken so much weight off our
shoulders.” LED 16 highlighted, “not only did we have to plan but we also had to prove.”
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So how did Design39 become what it is today and create a culture where everyone sees
themselves as life ready thought leaders who elevate humanity? In the case of Poway Unified, it
started with two dreams - how might we change the way we do school and how might we change
the way we do business? However, they soon found dreams are not enough. As Sarason (2004)
highlighted, “and what do you mean by learning” Design39 had to dissect the elements that often
go unnoticed, the grammar and rules, that contribute to the architecture of a school. For Design
39, it started with defining how everyone perceived the word school which led to them calling
themselves a campus. It began with them leading a series of design challenges that allowed them
to empathize with their stakeholders to understand the challenges, fears and motivations that
could drive the change they wanted to design, sustain and scale. The greatest shift was in calling
their educators learning experience designers and calling not just students, but everyone, a
learner.
At its core, design thinking cultivates a learner-centered environment that encompasses
all learners – adult and child.
Learner-centered is the perspective that couples a focus on individual learners – their
heredity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities and needs –
with a focus on learning – the best available knowledge about learning, how it occurs and
about teaching practices that are most effective in promoting the highest levels of
motivation, learning and achievement for all learners” (APA Work Group, 1997).
A learner-centered environment has a dual focus that drives learning experiences. It
places the educator in a continuous cycle of empathy, testing and iteration to meet the needs of
the “user” in this case the diverse learners in their classes. In the 21st century, a one size fits all
education model will not prepare graduates with the knowledge, skills and mindsets they need to
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thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens (McCombs & Whisler, 2007). Table 10
highlights core differences that were discussed in the interviews and seen during the observations
that mark the shift from a teacher-centered to learner-centered environment.
Table 10
Moving From Teacher-Centered to Learner-Centered Environment
Teacher-Centered Teacher and Student Nonformal and Informal
Learning
The teacher is the designer of all learning experiences Students and teachers partner in designing the learning
experience
Emphasis is on knowledge acquisition Emphasis is on knowledge, skills and mindsets
Teacher Drives the Experience Students Drive the Experience
Students work alone Students work in pairs, groups or alone depending on
the activity. They may work with industry experts or
others based on the needs of their learning experience.
Teacher answers students’ questions Students answer each other’s questions, using the
teacher as an information resource
Teacher determines content Students have agency to choose authentic topics to
drive their learning and the teacher determines learning
experience by asking, “what do my students need to
know.”
Teacher evaluates learning Students and the teacher evaluate learning, feedback is
an iterative ongoing process where learners set goals
for themselves and identify ways to be held
accountable
Classroom is quiet Classroom is often noisy and busy and extends beyond
the four brick and mortar walls
The teacher plans learning experiences alone The teacher is a learning experience designer who
collaborates with others (teachers and students) to
design learning on a regular basis

As the LED’s shared in their interviews, a culture of trust and vulnerability creates the
psychological safety necessary to collaborate and try new ideas. Success in learning is ultimately
driven through intrinsic motivation (Stamm, 2011) and this can only happen when you
understand the needs of those you are designing for and with to create experiences for learners
where everyone can see the value of this hard work. By identifying the interests, needs,
capabilities and motivations of themselves and their learners, the LEDs create a collaborative
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environment where they can make connections and provide a variety of instructional strategies
for helping their learners build the knowledge, skills and mindsets that are expected of them by
future workplaces, and empowering them as lifelong learners and global citizens. By engaging in
design thinking, the LEDs are able to take that same experience and apply it to the learning
experiences they design. Design thinking has created a culture where change thrives and has
provided the LEDs with a framework, mindset and toolset to have the motivation and self-
efficacy to redesign the curriculum as they ask, “how might we change the way we do school.”
As they come together each morning to design learning experiences, they have the learner at the
center, merging the knowledge, skills and mindsets they want them to graduate with and
personalizing it to meet their needs. The following chapter will build from the findings and
themes presented in this chapter to present recommendations and evaluation methods for other
schools interested in defining and designing a new grammar of school with design thinking.

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CHAPTER FIVE: RECOMMENDATIONS, IMPLEMENTATION, AND EVALUATION
Design39 is a public TK-8 school formed upon eight guiding principles – design
thinking, connecting globally, personalization, creativity, inquiry, growth mindset,
communication, collaboration and technology. Their mission is to create learning experiences
that are designed with the individual learner in mind so that they may be life ready thought
leaders that elevate humanity. The problem of practice addressed by this dissertation is how
design thinking can be used as one approach in K12 to address the larger challenge of changing
the traditional grammar of school so that all students are adequately prepared with the
knowledge, skills and mindsets to innovate, create new products, services and business models,
so that they may have access to opportunities that will allow them to thrive in future workplaces
and as global citizens .
The formation of Design39 began with a vision that took five years to define and design.
Upon recognizing the challenge that change cannot exist in isolation, a visionary superintendent
released a principal for 2 years along with 5 educators for one year to work with a community of
stakeholders to answer, “how might we change the way we do school?” While the vision for
what could be was enticing to many, the classic error of failing to articulate why school needed
to change led to a series of challenges where, after the first year of operation, over 150 parents
and over 50% of the teaching staff left. With the exit of the superintendent who pioneered the
vision, Design39 was moments away from returning to textbooks and 50-minute class periods.
The newly appointed principal brought with him a new vision and charisma, a blend of humility,
ego and vulnerability that he would use to tell a new story of why school needed to change and a
strategy to get there. To rebuild trust, he worked with stakeholders from across the district and
community to restore faith in the possibility that defining and designing a new grammar of
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school was possible through collaboration, empathy and a sacred commitment to doing what you
say you believe.
Studying Design39 can provide insights into how utilizing design thinking can be one
approach to address the larger challenge of changing the grammar of school so that all students
are adequately prepared with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to innovate, create new
products, services and business models and have access to opportunities that will allow them to
thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. Design39 stands as a promising practice in
their ability to define and design a new grammar of school through a culture of empathy. In
recognizing the needs of their LEDs, their learners, their parents and other stakeholders, they
dedicated the time and space to have conversations to collectively understand, “how might
we…”. Through empathizing with the needs of the LEDs in particular, Design39 cultivated an
environment that fosters trust, autonomy and ownership, where the LEDs are seen as
professionals who can make decisions about how to define and design a new grammar of school,
moving away from traditional practices and preparing their learners with the knowledge, skills
and mindsets they need to thrive.
The following two research questions were addressed in Chapter Four, “What is the
LEDs’ knowledge and motivation influences related to integrating design thinking into the
curriculum?” and “What is the interaction between the organizational culture and relationships
by leadership on LEDs’ knowledge and motivation?” The three emerging themes from the data
analysis were that all educators are inherently designers, a culture of innovation begins with a
culture of empathy, and that design thinking can help define and design a new grammar of
school. This chapter addresses the third and final research question providing recommendations
in the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources that may be appropriate for
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solving the problem of practice at other schools. Educators are designers was one of the themes
that emerged in every interview with the LEDs. The LEDs firmly believed that design thinking
provided them with the vocabulary and environment to design learning experiences that change
the decades old grammar of schooling so that all students and educators are adequately prepared
with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive. The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analysis
Model was used to examine Design39 that stands as a promising practice in how they have
integrated design thinking across the curriculum. In moving from a teacher-centered to learner-
centered environment, they provided their LEDs with an environment that fosters trust,
autonomy and ownership.
Through this research study, the knowledge, motivation and organization assets were
identified and validated that enabled successful integration of design thinking. This chapter
utilizes the key findings from each of the knowledge, motivation and organization assets to
address the final research question guiding this study: what recommendations in the areas of
knowledge, motivation and organizational resources may be appropriate for solving the problem
of practice at another organization? This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section
presents recommendations based on the validated assets to advance the integration of design
thinking to define and design a new grammar of school. The second section presents an
evidence-based implementation plan from the data collected including timelines and resources.
The third section presents ideas for evaluating the implementation of design thinking in school
settings utilizing the Kirkpatrick model (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016) to assess if the
implementation plan is effective in integrating design thinking and to make necessary
adjustments over time. The chapter closes with recommendations for future research and final
reflections.
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Recommended Solutions from Emerging Themes
Three emerging themes resulted from the key findings: educators need to see themselves
as inherent design thinkers, educators need to see the value of design thinking, and a culture of
innovation begins with a culture of empathy. Each theme is examined along with providing
evidence-based recommendations that can be utilized by other education organizations. Table 11
summarizes the relationship between the key findings and the emerging themes.
Table 11
Emerging Themes From Findings on Knowledge, Motivation and Organization Assets
Educators must recognize
themselves as learning experience
designers
Educators need to see the value of
design thinking
A culture of innovation begins
with a culture of empathy
Educators defining design thinking
in the context of their work is
critical
When a shared vision is determined
by the needs of the stakeholders it
reinforces the norms and values that
drive the motivation to integrate
design thinking.
When educators experience a shift
from provided to personalized and
purpose driven professional
development, they take ownership
of their professional learning.
When educators recognize the
relationship between teaching,
learning and design thinking, they
see themselves as learning
experience designers.
Increased self-efficacy from
understanding their unique
superpower to integrate design
thinking creates a culture of
collaboration and trust.
A culture of empathy leads to
vulnerability and psychological
safety.
When educators see how subjects
can be integrated through design
projects they value the design
thinking process.
A shift away from grading for
completion with numbers and
letters to grading for growth
through demonstrating
competencies
A flexible schedule that includes
daily collaboration time built in
provides the time and space to
transform traditional teaching
practices.
As educators reflect on their design
thinking experiences they see the
transformation in themselves and in
their students.
Ongoing mastery orientation and
growth mindset leads to trust,
autonomy and purpose.

Recommendations Based on Emerging Themes
Theme 1: Educators Must Recognize Themselves as Learning Experience Designers
Recommendation: A Collaborative Learning Experience
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It is recommended that educators be given the opportunity to learn through a
collaborative course on design thinking, working as a grade level team cohort so that they see
themselves as learning experience designers. While an overview of the vision and terminology
behind design thinking can be useful as a guide, an immersive experience is essential. It is
recommended that participants engage in an activity of, “The Extraordinaires.” This thoughtfully
designed simulation is particularly relevant to educators as it allows a content free exploration
while providing a deep understanding in the stages and relevance of the model. In a study
examining human-centered design to empower educators as designers, 91% of participants
embarking on this experience, examining the integration of design thinking into their content
area, shared that they found the experience useful. Furthermore, the level of comfort increased
throughout the course from 47% in week 1 to 84% in week 2 (Garreta-Domingo, Hernandez-Leo
& Sloep, 2018). This approach is one utilized by Design39 when first introducing LEDs to
design thinking, many of whom mentioned this as useful to establish their understanding of the
topic and its possibility for integration. Throughout the interviews with the LEDs at Design39,
collaboration was mentioned repeatedly. The LEDs shared that when working in isolation, the
task of utilizing design thinking was daunting compared to when working with colleagues. The
collaborative approach to the online course presents an opportunity for the group to engage in
ongoing reflection about their beliefs and behavior with relationship to their environment and to
prevent them from being overwhelmed. While an outside consultant can prove beneficial at a
later stage, before seeking outside support, the members of the organization should have an
opportunity to build their skills and capacity to support the organizational change. Clark and
Estes (2008) explain that enhancing human performance is a beneficial asset to an organization
and many training programs do not always deliver sought after results. In addition, they share
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that a top down approach is rarely successful and that every member of the team should have an
understanding and specific outline of what their performance goals are in relation to the larger
organizational goals. Being able to spend time analyzing their own environment and needs of
their learners, they will be able to identify specific areas for where an outside consultant can
provide value.
Through this experience, the educators will be able to explore the relationship between
teaching, learning and design. What makes the role of a teacher unique and influential is their
relationship with the learner. Educators must first be introduced to the concept of design thinking
and be given an opportunity to move from theory to practice. Through this collaborative
experience, they will begin to explore how to adapt their environment that in turn will shape their
beliefs and behavior. In his social cognitive theory, Bandura describes the relationship between
the individual, the environment and behavior (1986). While we often see an emphasis on the
environment with flexible learning spaces, increased uses of technology and devices and elective
STEM classes, there is less emphasis when it comes to changing behavior and beliefs. Through
engaging in this collaborative course, educators can begin to see themselves as designers and
have increased self-efficacy and creative confidence that will influence their beliefs and
ultimately their behavior.
Recommendation: Modifying a Traditional Unit of Study into a Design Experience
It is recommended that LEDs be given time to take the ideas learned in the design
thinking course and apply it to a unit of study including built in assessments within two months.
Applying ideas that you have learned to your own unique context is a hallmark in transfer of
knowledge. For example, experiencing a design challenge to learn the philosophy and process is
step one, creating your own for your content and learners will be evidence of mastery. In taking
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the design thinking course, educators will have an opportunity to understand the design process
and create a learning experience collaboratively with their grade level team. It is here upon the
culmination of the course with an experience they have designed that they will have a shared
vision and creation of goals that examine how to address the wicked problem of changing the
grammar of school at the intersection of their beliefs, behavior and environment. Throughout the
interviews, it was repeatedly mentioned that seeing their learners engage with content, generate
ideas, exude curiosity and unleash their creativity became the driving force for motivating the
LEDs and allowed them to see the value of design thinking as a method to challenge traditional
models of instruction.
Recommendation: Designing New Methods for Assessment
Assessment comes from the Latin root, “assidere,” which means to learn beside (Green,
1998). At the core of a design thinking experience for learners will require new assessment
practices marking a transition from grading for completion and compliance towards grading for
growth where the educator and learner are learning side by side. For example, there will need to
be multiple opportunities for not only the educators to formatively assess the learners, but to
embed opportunities throughout the learning experience for the learners to self-reflect on their
progress and growth. Whereas in many traditional environments there is a standardized
assessment for all learners, there will need to be a marked shift away from this. While a
standardized assessment can be utilized, it cannot be the only method of assessment.
To assess the new unit of study that integrates design thinking, educators will need to
plan for how they will utilize the formative assessments to inform the daily learning experiences.
In a learner-centered environment, the focus is placed on the individual learner, their capacities,
their strengths and their needs, allowing educators to return to the original form of assessment
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(Weimar, 2013). The continuous journey of how the learner moves through the design process
will be evidence of growth across knowledge, skills and mindsets. Assessment in a learner-
centered context is not just merely a number but a measurement of mastery-orientation, from
where they began to where they have progressed to. As a result, we transition from a culture of
pass or fail to a culture of “…yet” (LED 17). This was language cited by the LEDs throughout
the interviews and seen during the observations. Instead of saying, “I can’t do this,” they said, “I
can’t do this yet.” In a dynamic world that is continuously changing and where the expectations
about the tasks you partake in evolve, it is essential to have a growth mindset (Dweck, 2007). In
the traditional grammar of school model that favors compliance and a one size fits all model of
learning, children often receive the message through grades and standardized assessments that
they are either “can or can’t” (LED 17). When engaging in design thinking experiences, children
and adults are able to enhance and develop the mindsets, such as metacognition, learning from
failure and being comfortable with ambiguity (Carroll et al., 2010). Through these experiences,
there is a deeper recognition that the first try is never the last try, and that through ongoing
iteration there is progress (Carroll et al., 2010). Design thinking can ultimately help individuals
develop a growth mindset that they can apply to novel scenarios, as Dweck (2007) found people
with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than
those with a growth mindset.
Assessments in a learner-centered environment provide a look across knowledge, skills
and mindsets made up of student self-reflections, the educators’ own observations about how the
learner is progressing and student work samples (Weimar, 2013). With design thinking being an
iterative process, it is essential that feedback is timely, relevant and actionable, and helps
learners work towards mastery-orientation (Weimar, 2013). It is recommended that in the
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process of modifying a traditional unit of study into a design experience, the grade levels
examine how they can move towards a mastery-based assessment model as students engage in
different design thinking experiences. With design thinking as a foundation for learning
experiences, mastery-based assessment models can provide the guidance to make the transition
from grading for completion towards grading for growth. The Mastery Collaborative (2020) have
identified a framework for mastery that involves changes in four areas that must coincide to
create the conditions for success – schoolwide belief in mastery, commitment to just and fair
environment, ongoing examination of beliefs and biases and supportive leadership and
collaboration (Figure 9). In this learner-centered environment, learners engage in relevant
experiences where they have agency and meaningful assessments that lead to them being able to
enhance their knowledge, skills and mindsets so that they may thrive.
Figure 9
Framework for Mastery: masterycollaborative.org

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Theme 2: Seeing the Value of Design Thinking
Recommendation: Taking the ICBD to Establish Norms and Values
A shared understanding about everyone’s behavioral and thinking preferences allows for
empathy and the development of shared norms and values at the start of projects. This allows for
an environment where the individuals’ needs are recognized and deepens the culture of
collaboration. To begin, it is recommended that groups begin with an exercise known as ICBD –
Intention, Boundaries, Concerns and Dreams to create radical alignment and empathy for
everyone involved (Gower & Jamieson, 2018). This exercise will allow them to reflect on the
recommendations presented in Phase One and discuss how they would like to move forward. The
importance lies not in the performance capabilities but rather in the behavioral norms that are
established (Gower & Jamieson, 2018). This shift will be a positive step towards creating
psychological safety – a shared belief that the team dynamic is a safe space for interpersonal risk
taking (Edmonson, 1999). This culture is crucial for defining and designing a new grammar of
school because it supports the idea that the first try is not the last try. Furthermore, it makes an
overwhelming endeavor manageable by having the diverse skillset of those in the group. This
culture opens the door to asking and exploring questions about how school could be different to
meet the needs of their learners utilizing the classic design thinking question to guide new ideas,
“how might we…”
Learning and sharing your thinking and behavior patterns provides both the individual
and those they are collaborating with to establish a culture of psychological safety where they
can trust and be vulnerable with one another. Through the ICBD, they will develop a deeper
understanding about the norms and values that will allow them to work most effectively as a
team.
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Recommendation: Identifying Your Superpower with Emergenetics
It is recommended that every educator take the Emergenetics test to increase their self-
awareness and share with others about their thinking and behavioral preferences. LEDs 9 and 11
shared, “It’s not a matter of if I can or cannot do something. If we had to, we could probably all
do it. The question we like to ask is, ‘what are you energized by?’” Identifying what you are
energized by builds a strong foundation for self-efficacy, collaboration and communication when
working with a team. Identity development is an ongoing process balancing the widely accepted
image of what a teacher should know and do (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2003). Today, the role
of a teacher as a lifelong learner is constantly evolving and responding to the dynamic global
environment and so there must be ongoing reflection to the question, “Who am I at this
moment?” (Kerby, 1991).
The Emergenetics assessment examines the thinking and behavior patterns people use on
a regular basis and assesses seven core areas – analytical preferences, conceptual preferences,
social preferences, structure preferences, expressiveness, assertiveness and flexibility
(Emergenetics.com, 2020). The Emergenetics test will allow the educators, in their grade level
teams and as an organization, to begin to develop an understanding of what energizes them and
allows for others to know who they can rely on for different tasks. The Diffusion of Innovation
theory developed by E.M Rogers (1962) explains how an idea gains momentum over time and
spreads amongst a group. He categorized people into five adopter categories – innovators, early
adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Instead of immediately bringing in outsiders
and implementing a top-down approach, it is necessary to create a culture of psychological safety
amongst the existing educators. In Project Aristotle, led by Harvard researcher Amy Edmonson
and Google on how to design effective teams, they found that it was not about the level of
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performance that differentiated successful teams from non-successful teams, rather it was the
behavioral norms the team developed (Edmonson, 1999). Building a culture of empathy is the
first step towards building a foundation of trust to foster social relationships within the
organization (Edmonson, 1999). Amongst educators in particular, this leads to a culture of
knowledge exchange, sharing of best practices and collaboration on lessons to continuously
improve learning (Moolenaar & Sleegers, 2010). Group trust is related to performance
improvement, and within a four-month period a positive change can emerge in trust, leading to
changes in performance (Drescher et al., 2014). Through taking the Emergenetics, educators can
better reflect on their practices and strengths to recognize how they effectively work with others
and what tasks are best suited to one’s strengths. Their top preferences are on their lanyard,
allowing others to recognize the style of the individual they are working with.
Recommendation: A Shared Vision and Communication Plan
It is recommended that the school begin by engaging in a design challenge asking, “how
might we change the way we do school?” It is recommended that this process include the voices
of all stakeholders so as to identify the needs of their learners. In today’s world, there is no one
size fits all model that should be applied. Learning is deeply personal and the challenges facing
schools even within the same district is diverse. While there is much to be learned from the work
of others, solutions must be personalized to the needs of the individual school. The significance
of a shared vision emerges as a theme from not only the research but the data analysis from this
study, and the impact it has had on the community in understanding why a new grammar of
school is needed. The previous recommendations now position the entire organization to come
together to design a shared vision and guiding principles that will allow for a shared vocabulary
and effective communication plan that can be shared with all stakeholders.
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In Start with Why (2010), Sinek identifies that, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy
why you do it.” Identifying and articulating a vision, for why design thinking to prepare learners
for the Fourth industrial Revolution, through an effective communication plan that can unite the
stakeholders and community together will be critical for motivation and organizational change.
Defining and designing what design thinking could look like, feel like and sound like allows for
accountability and understanding amongst all stakeholders. Tyack and Tobin studied cases where
individuals set out to challenge the grammar of school and found that their task was in part
political requiring communication and charisma (1994). A shared vision allows for a
communication plan that can be articulated through a variety of mediums. Defining the new
grammar of school is essential to everyone understanding how to design learning experiences for
it in their area. Furthermore, a shared vision enlists the support of the community which is
essential to build trust and continued enthusiasm towards an understanding of why we must
transform outdated practices, many of which people view as “real school” (Cremin, 1962).
Cremin further observed that education reform takes place at the intersection of public
conversations between schools, families, businesses and other community stakeholders,
examining both formal and informal networks of learning.
Theme 3: Designing a Culture of Innovation
Recommendation: Personalized Professional Learning
It is recommended that educators design a professional learning plan for each semester
both individually and together with their grade level team. The demands of the knowledge
economy require higher levels of creativity and collaboration at work; however, most
management systems are designed to create compliance (Gower & Jamieson, 2018). In
educational organizations, not only is creativity and collaboration required of workers, it is also
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expected that they can design experiences that meet at the intersection of the development of
knowledge, skills and mindsets. Yuval Hariri (2017) expands on this idea by sharing,
“traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning, followed by a
period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only
way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to
reinvent themselves repeatedly.” The proposed technical changes that make up the grammar of
school are based on the premise of designing an environment for learning not convenience. This
requires a fundamental shift in a new way of viewing how people learn and why the way in
which we must think about learning and how we support others in developing the skills to learn
to learn must evolve in a rapidly changing world.
Throughout the interviews with LEDs at Design39, everyone mentioned Project Beep
Beep as being the most beneficial to their own professional and personal growth. Through this
experience, they designed field trips for themselves that they went on with their colleagues. This
could include visiting different sites and businesses, attending conferences and workshops within
and across different industries, listening to podcasts, reading books, keeping a blog or creating
their own platforms where they learn and share. This plan should include a mix of group and
individual activities that are aligned to the goals they have set out for the year. The blend of a
personalized professional learning plan with ongoing collaboration with colleagues empowers
educators to take on the role of designers, moving them from being consumers to creators and
implementors of ideas (Mishra & Koehler, 2005). Sizer (1992) notes that time during the day for
people to come together creates the flexibility they need to respond to adjustments recommended
for each student. Sizer (1992) uses the analogy of a hospital noting how good hospitals allow for
time for staff consultations and expect collaboration in the diagnosis of problems and selection of
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remedies. This is absolutely essential in the transition from a teacher-centered to learner-centered
environment to eliminate the anchors that have prevented education reform such as curriculum
packages and standardized testing that lead to a one size fits all model and teacher burnout
(Weimar, 2013). Today’s educators are tasked with personalizing instruction to diverse learners
at the intersection of advanced knowledge, skills and mindsets to thrive in the demands of The
Fourth Industrial Revolution . To do so, they will need to be involved in designing their own
professional learning needs.
Recommendation: A Flexible Schedule
To adopt a design thinking environment, it is recommended that school schedules be
redesigned to include extended learning blocks, the opportunity for daily teacher collaboration
and the opportunity for collaboration across disciplines. If there is to be meaningful
interdisciplinary, inquiry-driven learning where the needs of individual learners are prioritized,
then the traditional 50-minute rotating schedule must be modified to longer learning blocks. One
of the areas Tyack and Tobin (1994) identified as being part of the grammar of schooling was the
schedule. The rigidity of a traditional schedule does not allow for deeper learning, flexibility to
adapt to the needs of learners or the opportunity to collaborate in depth with colleagues. While
this model will vary amongst organizations, the model at Design39 can be utilized as an
example. With the exception of dedicated time for daily LED collaboration and lunch, the use of
time during the learning blocks is left to the discretion of the LEDs. The leadership team will
play a critical role here as this will most likely involve discussions with the teacher union.
Finland references schedule redesign as one of the core tenets of peruskoulu, implemented in
1972 to address the challenges of the old system of schooling that Tyack and Tobin (1994)
reference as the grammar of schooling. For example, in high school, the two-semester system
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was replaced with 6-7-week learning blocks where students complete the courses they had
chosen (Sahlberg, 2015).
Another model that can be referenced is of “smaller houses” within larger organizations
that allow for a more personalized experience (Sizer, 1992). In a model presented in Horace’s
School (1992), Sizer introduces a model where students are divided into “houses” and work with
the same group of educators. The core priorities are time in class, time for community service
and time for educators to plan individually and work with colleagues. While the changes demand
time, creativity and rethinking of personnel, they do not require large financial obligations
allowing this to be a move towards greater equity for all learners (Hammond, 1995).
Examining ways to design a schedule that honors time, space and collaboration will be
critical to providing the organizational structure needed to apply the knowledge and motivation
that educators develop as they engage in integrating design thinking. All the LEDs referenced
their collaboration time and the large blocks of time as essential to the work they do. The next
section outlines an implementation plan that provides guidance in moving towards a culture of
innovation and empathy where educators recognize themselves as learning experience designers
and are motivated by the value of design thinking to develop the norms and values to drive
collaboration.
Implementation Plan
In this section, Table 12 presents the action steps, timelines and potential constraints to
implement the suggested recommendations embedded in the three themes. The timelines given
are an estimate and would need to be customized based on the needs of the individual school. For
any school, it is recommended that a pilot group be established and that they be given a one-year
sabbatical to do this work.
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Table 12
Summary of Recommendations with Action Steps, Timelines and Possible Constraints
Theme Action Step Timeline Constraints
Phase 1: Educators Recognize Themselves as Design Thinkers
Educators recognize
themselves as learning
experience designers.
Complete a design
thinking course with your
grade level team
4 weeks (will vary based
on the length of time
needed to implement the
experience)
Comfort in an online
learning environment. Not
everyone will be
motivated to learn
something new.
Collaborate on a design
sprint to create a learning
experience
4 weeks
Week 1-2 – design the
experiences
Week 3-4 -
implementation
Comfort with design
process. Not everyone
will be motivated to
participate.
Design assessments for
the learning experience
4 weeks Knowledge of
competency-based
assessment
Phase 2: Seeing the Value of Design Thinking
Seeing the value of design
thinking to reinforce
motivation by developing
the norms and values that
drive collaboration
Reflect on the experience
and results from phase 1
with ICBD
2 weeks Collection of evidence
and daily reflections

Vulnerability, this is an
exercise that requires a
level of comfort with
those you are sharing with
Emergenetics Assessment 2 weeks Cost
Lead a design challenge
to create a shared vision
4 weeks

Varying opinions
amongst stakeholders.
Leader is not able to
articulate “why” and
gather people together.
Design a communication
plan
4 weeks Access to different
communication platforms.
Phase 3: Designing a Culture of Innovation
Designing a culture of
innovation that begins
with a culture of empathy
Personalized professional
development plan
4 weeks (ongoing) Motivation and
investment from
educators to design and
partake in these.
A flexible schedule This timeline is dependent
on stakeholder
negotiations
Time and commitment
from stakeholders.

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Evaluation Plan
To evaluate the success of the implementation plan, the Kirkpatrick Four-Level Training
Evaluation model is utilized. The four levels of assessment are: 1) reaction – how participants
react to the content; 2) learning – extent to which participants change attitudes, knowledge and
skills; 3) behavior – extent to which there is a change in behavior as a direct result of the content,
and; 4) results – changes that occurred because they participated in the program (Kirkpatrick &
Kirkpatrick, 2016). In this section table 13 presents the evaluation plan to successfully assess the
implementation of integrating design thinking across the curriculum. Evaluations should take
place within each phase before moving to the next one. The surveys and interviews will be
embedded within the activities/courses that the participants partake in.
Table 13
Evaluation plan to assess implementation
Recommendation Action Step Level 1: Reaction Level 2:
Learning
Level 3:
Behavior
Level 4:
Results
Phase 1: Educators recognize themselves as learning experience designers
Educators
recognize
themselves as
learning
experience
designers

Complete a
design thinking
course

A survey will be
used to assess the
value perceived.
This will also
serve as a pretest.
A survey will be
used to assess
the value
through the
identification of
a unit of study
they will
redesign.
Educators will
engage in
learning circles
where grade
level teams will
be able to learn
from one
another. Job
aids such as
templates and
examples will be
shared.
There will be a
shift in balance
of power in the
classroom as the
teacher moves
from the center
to the role of a
coach.
There will be
increased use
of design
thinking across
grade level.
Examples of
redesigned
lessons that
highlight
“before and
after” that are
shared on
individual and
school wide
websites and
social media
platforms to
share with each
other and
community
members,

Collaborate on
a design sprint
to redesign a
learning
experience
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Success here
reflects press
coverage about
school redesign
Design
assessments
for the learning
experience
There will be a
pretest to
determine how
they currently
assess and where
they see a need
for change
A post-test will
be used to assess
how the grading
practices have
shifted from
numbers and
letters to
competencies
and discussions
about individual
growth
There will be
shift in “what do
I need to cover
in the next X
number of
weeks,” to
“what do my
students need to
know, do and
practice.”
There will be a
cultural shift
where growth
is discussed
with individual
students,
through report
cards and in
parent teacher
conferences
through
competencies
versus numbers
and letters.
Phase 2: Seeing the value of design thinking
Seeing the value
of design
thinking to
reinforce
motivation by
developing the
norms and values
that drive
collaboration
ICBD ICBD and other
methods are
used to nurture
collaboration
and a culture of
togetherness.
Every project
begins with
ICBD.
Emergenetics
Assessment
There will be a
pretest to
determine their
confidence in the
utilization of the
Emergenetics
assessment and
ICBD to create a
culture of
empathy.
There will be a
posttest to
determine the
impact they have
seen through the
Emergenetics
and ICBD on the
culture.

Emergenetics
assessment
guides the
activities they
partake in and
how they
contribute
during
collaboration.
There is
increased
participation in
creating change
where everyone
has a role.

Roles are
designated and
teams are
organized
according to
what
individuals are
energized by

Everyone
wears the
Emergenetics
lanyard so that
others become
increasingly
familiar with
what they are
energized by.
135
Create a vision
statement,
guiding
principles and
a
communication
plan.

The empathy mapping results from the
design challenge and a survey will
assess inclusivity and enthusiasm
towards the vision.
The language of
the vision is
referred to often
and can be seen
in learning
experiences.
Examples are
shared regularly.
The
communication
plan is
articulated
throughout all
documents when
sharing the why
behind learning
experiences and
other changes
taking place.

When asked,
stakeholders
can explain
why a new
grammar of
school is being
created.

Phase 3: Designing a culture of innovation
From a teacher-
centered to a
learner-centered
environment
Personalized
Professional
Learning
Survey to
determine how
they feel about
designing their
own professional
development.

Learning is
personalized for
learners as well as
educators.
Survey to
determine
commitment
and confidence
in achieving the
goal.

Two interviews
with each
teacher outlining
2-3 learning
goals, how they
designed
professional
learning
opportunities in
alignment with
their goals and
reflection on
how it has
shaped their
practice.
One group
planned site visit
and reflection
follow up.

There is an
increase in the
content that the
educators are
creating for
external and
internal use.

A community
of collaborative
lifelong
learners who
share things
they have
learned from
one another and
then implement
their learnings
into their
practice.
A flexible
schedule
Survey to
determine
satisfaction with
the redesigned
schedule

Pre and post
survey three
times throughout
the year to
assess how they
feel about the
schedule
redesign
Two interviews
with teachers
about how the
schedule
redesign has
shaped the
learning
experiences they
can design and
how it
influenced their
own practice.
The school
schedule is
designed in
learning blocks,
not content
blocks, that are
agile and can
be modified
based on the
needs of the
learners and
educators.
136
Future Research
While design thinking has deep historical roots across other industries, it is an emerging
idea in the field of education. As a result, there is a need for more empirical studies in four
different areas – design thinking as a framework for education, utilization of design thinking for
teaching and learning, how leaders can support educators with design thinking, and using design
thinking in teacher preparation programs. When examining design thinking as a framework for
education, there needs to be an in-depth examination of how the different areas are tied together
and how it is differentiated from other models, specifically PBL (project-based learning). While
there are numerous models that have adapted the design thinking process for education, none are
evidence-based and can often cause more confusion amongst educators about the role of design
thinking in education.
The second area that requires further research is how design thinking is utilized for life
long and life wide teaching and learning. While this study presents examples of design thinking
in different grade levels, each of those examples are worthy of their own study, across different
topics and across the time span of the academic year to truly assess growth in knowledge, skills
and mindsets that are cultivated through engaging in design thinking practices. There are a
number of studies that examine the role of design thinking in electives, specifically STEM and
maker courses, there are more needed in the core curricular areas to demonstrate the relationship
between standards, knowledge, skills and mindsets for a particular grade level.
The third area identified is a need to examine how those in an administrative role can
create the structures and culture to support educators as they transform their practice, moving
from a teacher-centered to learner-centered environment. With the current observation and
evaluation procedures that are in place that often hinder innovation, this is an essential area to
137
share evidence-based practices on if individuals are going to be confident in the integrity of this
model for approaching education reform.
The fourth area identified is a need to further examine how design thinking can be used to
prepare incoming educators through a credential program and how it can be used to introduce the
idea to veteran educators. Within this context, there is a need to specifically examine how one
can be taught to develop and practice empathy. Empathy is a core tenet of design thinking that
differentiates it from other models and specific practices and case studies of how this has
occurred within different contexts and across different grade levels is essential.
Conclusion
Two years ago, when this dissertation began, the need for education reform to prepare
learners to thrive in a complex and turbulent world seemed vague and futuristic, something we
would do in the future. In the last few months, Covid-19 has brought us to a standstill and made
education reform an urgent challenge requiring immediate attention. It was perhaps the first time
everyone, everywhere was forced to come to terms with the instability and complexity of
challenges emphasized in the Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014) and the
Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016). The pandemic enlightened upon all the importance
of continuous learning, empathy, comfort with ambiguity, testing and iteration and the need for
optimism, all mindsets that are cultivated through the practice of design thinking. Automation
was often the premise for education reform, this dissertation began with, “While the age of
automation has the potential to create enormous prosperity, the challenge to societies,
particularly businesses, governments and education systems, will be to create access to
opportunities that will allow everyone to share in the prosperity.” However, as we are currently
witnessing, it was an invisible virus that brought the world to a standstill, where every industry
138
and individual is confronted with a world filled with change, complex challenges and ambiguity.
Automation and advances in technology have shaped our response and the design of solutions.
The one constant remains that regardless of how the change unfolds there is always potential for
prosperity and potential for increased inequity. Covid-19 has unveiled the stark inequity that
exists amongst and within societies. Regardless of how and what the future brings, the LED’s
and practices at Design 30 demonstrate how design thinking remains a promising practice that
can provide individuals with the skillset and mindset to experience success by being able to
innovate, create new products, services and business models so that they may thrive in future
workplaces and as global citizens.

139
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151
APPENDIX A
Interview Protocol
Assumed
Influences
Description Focus Group Interview Questions
Knowledge
Influences
LEDs have knowledge of
design thinking.
What does design thinking mean to you?

How were the ideas about design thinking
connected to what you already know?

What new ideas did you get that extended
your thinking in new directions after learning
about design thinking?

What is still challenging or confusing for you
to get your mind around?

LEDs know how to integrate
design thinking into the
curriculum
Suppose it were my first week on campus and
I was unsure about how to begin integrating
design thinking into my curriculum, what
advice would you give me?

Tell me about a lesson you are currently
working on?

How does this look different at Design39
compared to a more traditional model?

LEDs know how to reflect
on their effectiveness
integrating design thinking
into their curriculum?
What do you do once the lesson is over?

How does what happens during the course of
the lesson impact your daily collaboration
time together?

Motivation
Influences
LEDs see the value in
integrating design thinking
in the curriculum to
empower students to thrive
in future workplaces.
What is the value of integrating design
thinking into the curriculum for your grade
level?

What do you see that makes you say that?

What do students say?

LEDs believe they are
capable of effectively
integrating design thinking
into the curriculum
alongside traditional
methods.
When did you begin teaching?

How did you come to learn about design
thinking?

152
What role has design thinking played in your
experience as an educator?

LEDs want to collaborate
with other teachers to
engage in continuous
improvement of their ability
to integrate design thinking.
What is the value of collaboration with other
teachers when integrating the design thinking
process and mindsets into the curriculum?

How do you prepare for collaboration time
together?

Walk me through what a collaboration session
in the design studio looks like?

What other opportunities are available for
collaboration?
Organizational
Influences
Desig39 cultivates a culture
of general acceptance and
willingness among LEDs to
change traditional methods
of teaching
If you wanted to try something new what does
that look like?

Design 39 provides
professional development to
LEDs, so they can continue
to enhance and develop their
ability to integrate design
thinking into the curriculum.

Tell me why Design39 advocates for design
thinking as an approach to teaching the
curriculum to parents and other community
members?

How does Design39 enhance and develop the
ability of learning experience designers to
integrate design thinking?

Design39 created a schedule
that allows for the
integration of design
thinking into the curriculum
Who was involved in creating the current
schedule you have in place?

What was the process of designing the current
schedule?

What are some of the challenges and
opportunities the schedule affords?

153
APPENDIX B
Observation Protocol

CA Standard:
Objective:
Placement of lesson within overall unit:
Teacher Grade Time Topic Materials

Activity 1

Teacher Role

Student Role
Activity 2

Teacher Role

Student Role

Assessments:

154
APPENDIX C
Recruitment Letter

Survey Recruitment

You are invited to complete a brief survey as part of Sabba Quidwai’s doctoral study on design
thinking to prepare students for future workplaces and as global citizens. The purpose of this
study is to understand how you as learning experience designers are able the knowledge,
motivation and organizational influences that empower you to integrate design thinking into your
curriculum.

The survey should take between 5-10 minutes to complete. There are no right or wrong answers
and your responses will remain anonymous and so your honesty is greatly appreciated. You may
skip any questions that you do not wish to answer.

If you agree to participate in the survey, please follow this link.

Interview Recruitment (Focus Group and Individual)

Thank you for joining me today and agreeing to participate in this focus group with your grade
level team. I’m looking forward to learning from you and our conversation today. I am a student
in the Global Executive EdD program at the University of Southern California. My research
focuses on design thinking to prepare students for future workplaces and as global citizens. We’ll
be spending about an hour together and as we discuss the questions I just want to share with you
that there are no right or wrong answers.

Your responses will be kept confidential and will only be shared in summary form, with no
identifying information. So that I can best summarize our conversation here together, I would
like to record the interview. I will upload the recording to a secure server and delete it from my
device. Do I have your permission to record the interview?

Do you have any questions before we get started? If you do not want to answer any of the
questions, feel free to skip and we can stop the interview at any time.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract There is a weakening link worldwide emerging between education and economic mobility. Despite the changing expectations of the workplace brought forth by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, today's education systems largely remain unchanged and are not preparing graduates with the knowledge, skills and to thrive in future workplaces. Furthermore, the lack of equity has led to a growing digital use divide deepening the fragmentation of society. It is critical that education systems change the grammar of schooling, providing students with the skills and mindsets they need, and that today’s employers expect, and that civil society needs to thrive. This study examines how educators at a TK-8 school, Design39 Campus, utilized design thinking to define and design a new grammar of school, providing students with the knowledge, skills and mindsets to innovate, create new products, services and business models so that they can thrive in future workplaces and as global citizens. The results indicate strong agreement amongst the educators between developing in demand skills such as creativity, problem finding, collaboration and communication and practicing design thinking. In addition to skills the students are developing a strong mindset of empathy, creative confidence, learning from failure and optimism. Seeing their students and themselves enhance and develop the skills and mindset of a design thinker demonstrated the value in using design thinking and fueled their motivation to continue. It strengthened their self-efficacy and helped them embrace, not fear change. A set of is recommendations and an implementation and evaluation plan are shared for how other schools can integrate design thinking to transform their culture of teaching and learning.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Quidwai, Sabba (author)

Core Title Defining and designing a new grammar of school with design thinking: a promising practice study

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Global Executive

Publication Date 08/08/2020

Defense Date 08/07/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 21st century learning,design thinking,future of learning,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Krop, Cathy (committee chair), Maddox, Anthony (committee member), Picus, Larry (committee member)

Creator Email sabba.quidwai@gmai.com,sabbaqui@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-365126

Unique identifier UC11666338

Identifier etd-QuidwaiSab-8899.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-365126 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-QuidwaiSab-8899.pdf

Dmrecord 365126

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Quidwai, Sabba

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA