Mouse Executive Director Daniel Rabuzzi welcomes Ashley Pinakiewicz, a self described "MEd student at HGSE. galanizer. dancer. traveler. aspiring writer. student of the world. teacher. ardent eater" to our blog to discuss design thinking.

 
 Daniel: "Design thinking" has emerged in recent years as a new(ish) trend in education, including at the K-12 levels, related to the push for a redoubled focus on STE(A)M, "deeper learning," and "21st-century skills." David Kelley in 2010 noted the similarities: "The funny thing is that now in the K-12 literature I read all this stuff about 21st-century skills. And it's amazing because I could just cross out “21st-century skills” and put in “design thinking.” It's basically what we mean, which is a new way of thinking that adds to, but doesn’t replace, the way we normally think--­ what we call analytical thinking".
Why do you think "design thinking" is attracting such attention in K-12?

Ashley: That's a big question, and I'll attempt to answer it from two different perspectives. For one, there's been a pattern in K-12 of seeking one philosophy, approach, or structure for creating educational experiences, that fixes the many problems in our school system. In the words of David Tyack, we keep seeking as "one best system" to fix what plagues education. Many of these solutions, from increased testing to the Common Core to privatization, have been specifically prescribed scaffolds that have proven to be largely ineffective at improving schooling.

One appeals of design thinking is that it creates room for interpretation and adaptation. Instead of trying to place a pre-determined structure atop schools, each of which have unique cultures and challenges, design thinking provides a way to tackle the problems particular to schools (or school networks) without presuming to have one right answer. It's rooted in empathy and collaboration, which means that stakeholders - from parents to teachers to students themselves - become crucial participants in the process of creating better schooling. It insists on including voices that have so often been left out of the conversation.

I also think that K-12's interest in design thinking reflects changing professional environments. For many people, the purpose of education is to prepare students for the working world. Daniel Pink wrote about this years ago, and it seems obvious now: given advances in technology, evolving markets, and a global emphasis on innovation, employers seek workers who are creative, innovative, and adept at managing change and solving problems. These are all skills endemic to design thinking, which is the point David Kelley made. Design thinking is, in many ways, a mindset; it makes you look at the world and, instead of accepting things as they are, identify ways to make it better.
As a former hiring manager, these were the skills I sought in employees. At Tough Mudder, our product was always evolving, our competitive marketplace drastically changed in just one year, and the rules and resources of marketing, social media engagement, and advertising regularly shifted. I needed people who were great at dealing with uncertainty, had deep empathy for customers, and knew how to work with a variety of stakeholders to solve problems; I needed design thinkers.
Despite the education sector's tendency to embrace the latest fad, deploy it poorly, and deride it soon after (see: charter schools), I believe design thinking has staying power. It's a way of solving problems; in that sense, it's timeless. It's honest. It shouldn't be vulnerable to whims. It should open doors. I sincerely hope that it is used as such, because I think its potential to change education in this country is enormous.
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Daniel: Some challenge the premise of design thinking, at least as far as its potential use in elementary and secondary education. (A teacher friend of mine snorted that "ideation is just a fancy word for thinking-- why the pretension?") Learning theorist Debbie Morrison queried the applicability of design thinking in K-12, given the lack of prior knowledge and the potential for disconnect with cognitive development among children and adolescents:

"I am not convinced that Design Thinking is applicable to all sectors as we are led to believe, particularly in K-12 education. Design Thinking requires a breadth of knowledge and experience from various disciplines, which is not present in most K-12 students given the stage of their cognitive development and education background. It requires one to think of a problem from unconventional, even unlikely perspectives, that lead to a collection of insights that will ultimately produce a unique solution. Design Thinking has also been described as using a "close, almost anthropological observation of people to gain insight into problems that may not be articulated yet" (Korn & Silverman, 2012). Do K-12 students really have the education background to engage in Design Thinking? I suggest that teaching this process to K-12 students is not only unfeasible, but unnecessary and limiting. Rather than spending time teaching a structured, cookie-cutter problem-solving process, time might be better spent teaching, and facilitating learning in a breadth of subjects. Rather than give students more structure, they may benefit from less, yet more learning. To think outside of the box, to have multiple perspectives, students require an education grounded in the humanities."

What do you think of the constraints identified by Morrison and others? What can we realistically expect from a design thinking approach in K-12? Or are we fundamentally agreeing with the critics while stumbling over misconstruals and differing nomenclatures?
Ashley: I think Morrison highlights an ongoing debate about whether educators should prioritize content or pedagogy when educating children. I agree that students need a deep foundation of content knowledge, to be culturally competent, to understand the application of theories and ideas, and to form their own opinions. When I worked at IDEO, I worked on projects for a museum, an online payment service, and a toy company, to name a few. I was not an expert in any of these industries. I didn't need to be a museum expert to help the museum; my role was to empower the experts to see their problems differently by teaching them the process of design thinking. The process requires a capacity to see things with fresh eyes and to empathize with end users and stakeholders; those are skills that cross industries and content areas.
Further, I firmly disagree with the belief that students aren't capable of engaging in design thinking. I have taught design thinking to adult executives across sectors, and I have taught it to middle and high school students. In my experience, students are better able than adults to grasp the concepts behind, and implement, design thinking. When I co-led a design thinking workshop to MOUSE students alongside a former colleague, Rachel Derkits-Gelman, I was thrilled to see that the students moved through our content at a faster rate than our adult clients typically did. The approach is now part of Mouse's curriculum. While I'm no developmental scientist, my experience working with children and adults has led to a few, un-scientific hypotheses as to why students are adept at this process:

• They have more confidence in their own creativity than adults do. While schooling in America tends to beat this creative confidence out of students over time (see Ken Robinson for more on this), students are far more self-assured in their capacity to come up with ideas. The process feels intuitive to them. Executives who have been working in hierarchical companies tend to believe they are "not creative" because their professional identities are determined by their titles. 
• They see possibilities, not obstacles. When brainstorming ideas to solve a design challenge with adult clients, I always heard, "That won't work because..." Adults are conditioned to find reasons "why not," whereas children retain enough optimism to look for reasons "why." 
• They have more empathy. As we get older, the world tends to narrow. We are rewarded for having strong opinions and sticking to them. Children, on the other hand, are more naturally empathetic; they are more able to step back from their egos and their fears of looking inadequate or stupid than adults are. 
• They are more comfortable with uncertainty. Adults - especially working adults - have a lot of stake in looking like they know what they're doing. Traditionally, that's been rewarded in the workplace. Students' natural curiosity is more unchecked, and they are comfortable with experimentation.

That said, despite my clear support for design thinking, I don't think it's the silver bullet education has been looking for. I don't think there is one approach, one idea, one data set that will solve all of education's problems. Further, simply because I believe in this process doesn't mean I think that all schools are set up to teach and support it properly. I do believe, however, in the endless capacity of children to learn, to develop ideas, and to help us see things differently. I look at the projects Mouse students  have done to help their communities, for example, and I see overwhelming evidence that children are more than capable of being design thinkers.  

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Daniel: Most of the impetus for design thinking has come from the design schools and the business schools, e.g., Parsons The New School for Design, the Stanford d school, RISD, Rotman at the University of Toronto, as well as the Cooper Hewitt and firms such as IDEO and frog. For all the talk of design thinking in K-12, I don't see the schools of education as involved-- an exception highlighting the norm is John Nash's dLab team at the University of Kentucky's College of Education. What's your impression of design thinking as a field at the ed schools? What is its status at the HGSE?

Ashley: This is something I'm extremely passionate about. At HGSE, I took two classes that teach design thinking to grad students, with the goal of using the process to create a solution to a problem - any problem - plaguing education. Jal Mehtateaches a class on Deeper Learning, in which he demonstrates how design thinking can have tangible effects on school systems, individual schools, and classrooms.Karen Brennan, of MIT's Media Lab, teaches a class on constructionism. She introduces the concept as well, and the entire course is designed to provoke grad students to be expansive, empathetic thinkers. An organization called HIVE connects HGSE to Harvard's Innovation Lab, providing a physical and intellectual venue for students to practice design thinking and innovation as they apply to education challenges. I've begun a Design Thinking student group, which is off to a slow start, but I am encouraged by initial interest from students. In all, I am thrilled to have access to these opportunities, but the rest of HGSE is still largely disconnected from a design thinking dialogue, and I think there are a few reasons for this.

For one, there is a great deal of skepticism within education bout outside ideas, particularly those from the private sector. There's a deeply held belief that education is so different from any other sector that outside ideas will never work. I think there's good reason for this reticence, namely a history of poor implementation of ideas from healthcare and business, but I find it a dangerous mindset. Most agree that the educational sector is broken in many places; for me, the logical conclusion is that we need more, better ideas, not a refusal to entertain ones that come from other places. I believe in borrowing from brilliance, regardless of where it comes from. In any case, ed schools tend to be more traditional, emphasizing academic research over ideas of practice. The professors I mentioned are exceptions to the rule, but I think there is a culture within higher education that needs to shift for design thinking - and other schools of thought - to have a more of a presence, and cultural shifts take time.

I also believe that ed schools suffer from an awareness problem; they're either unknown, unconsidered, or thought irrelevant by those outside the sector. The schools tend to target and support fields of study that are limited to work in the sector, which has traditionally offered a narrow range of career opportunities. That's changing now, thanks largely to ed tech, but I think there are residual implications. As a consultant and marketer who looked at further education throughout my ten-year career, a Masters in Education never appeared on my radar, despite accessing numerous career and personal development resources. I came to HGSE because I was driven by a personal passion for education, and I believed that my experiences in the private sector could bring value to the sector. I have yet to met another student at HGSE (though I've heard rumors of one) who comes from outside the education sector.

I believe that there are countless professionals whose varied experiences, rich perspectives, and unique insights can make great contributions to this field. Further, I believe ed schools provide insight into organizational management, mentorship, and leadership that would be valuable to those not necessarily interested in working for schools, school systems, or ed policy. The trouble is that ed schools don't typically look for candidates outside of the sector, and people who might find a graduate degree in education fulfilling and valuable self-select out of the pool to begin with. I spoke with HGSE's Dean about this, and he was very receptive to the idea of HGSE expanding its consideration of where to advertise. In many ways, this is a marketing problem, and I'd love to see HGSE lead the charge here.

Daniel Rabuzzi is Executive Director at Mouse.

Read Part Two: Interview with Ashley