• Can Design Thinking Help Schools Find New Solutions to Old Problems? | MindShift | KQED News

  “In education we do not typically engage our users — our students — to find what is causing them to be disengaged,” Samuels said. Instead, we often make the assumption that their disengagement means they don’t care about school or don’t have long term goals and dreams.

  tags: design thinking help schools solutions

  • “In education we do not typically engage our users — our students — to find what is causing them to be disengaged,” Samuels said. Instead, we often make the assumption that their disengagement means they don’t care about school or don’t have long term goals and dreams.

  • “What we began to learn is that they did have those dreams and long term goals, but they weren’t able to sustain themselves in the moment through a difficult situation to get to those goals,” Samuels said. “They didn’t have the regulation skills. They had other things pulling them all the time, even though they cared and wanted to do the right thing.”

  • Students would come in, check their email and find a list of activities they were responsible for completing online

  • At first, the school experimented with various kinds of prepackaged software, but soon learned that online lessons put together by actual teachers worked far better.

  • Boys who’d struggled to complete assignments with their teacher looking over their shoulder were thriving with more independence.

  • “Our view is, you give responses based on the needs of students,” Samuels said. “Equity does not mean that everyone gets the same thing.”

  • “The biggest challenge is mindset, the mindset of your teachers and staff,” Samuels said. “If they have a traditional mindset, then they’re not going to be willing to learn from the process.”

  • And the process of getting to know stakeholders, thinking outside the box and trying out creative solutions, even if they don’t work, is crucial to success.

  • Another challenge is the cyclical nature of the design-thinking process. Schools are not start-ups and finding time to iterate can be a challenge.

  • we have to slow ourselves down to make sure we really understand the problem, that’s the biggest challenge

  • Samuels suggests starting small and being honest about the big challenges in a school. He also says it works best to pick a small group of people who are comfortable with something new and who will offer up crazy ideas. When teachers are included in this work, they buy in, loving the voice it gives them. Over time, that attitude permeates throughout the school.

  • Bronx Writing Academy is one of hundreds of schools that have participated in various New York City iZone programs. The special office at the New York City Department of Education is trying to build innovation capacity at school sites in three ways: connecting like-minded educators to share ideas, influencing the design of education technology products that fit educator needs and supporting schools using design thinking to shift the culture of problem solving at school sites.

  • The iZone uses several other design thinking protocols adapted to the educator’s context from Stanford d.school and Design Gym materials. Some of the techniques are:

  • Shadow a stakeholder

  • Intercepts: this protocol involves quickly interviewing people with the problem in mind.

  • Insight Mad Libs:

  • Creating an Issues Map:

  • Create or build a low-resolution prototype:

  • For his part, Samuels says he’s building buy-in when an intervention developed out of user-centered design works. For example, the technology program and emphasis on learner choice is paying off in his sixth graders. “They work with more independence and are able to ask questions that make you feel as though they have a higher expectation of us,” Samuels said.

  • They are becoming advocates for their own learning.

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