Design Thinking Tools for Educators

Background and problem statement

The “reflective practitioner” has for years been regarded in VET as an ideal model of the skilled worker, yet this concept has rarely been transferred to VET teachers. The ERASMUS+ project DT4VET views design thinking (DT) as a key method for prompting reflective practices among VET teachers. DT has particular potential to promote transversal skills, such as creative and critical thinking, taking initiative and working collaboratively. Seven partners from four countries, Türkiye, Finland, Italy and Germany, are developing, testing and evaluating a continuing professional development seminar on design thinking for vocational teachers.

Research questions

• What existing approaches to promoting key competences in vocational teacher education are available among the partners, and what gaps in teaching provision does the course analysis reveal?

• How do bilateral peer-learning processes between the partner countries contribute to developing a design thinking seminar that responds to global VET trends and specifically addresses the competence gaps identified?

• What quantitative and qualitative effects, particularly on collaborative working, does the piloted design thinking seminar have on participating teachers?

• How can the seminar’s evaluated success factors be integrated permanently into existing VET curricula and teaching and learning methods to ensure sustainable competence development?

Approach

The project comprised four work packages:

• Compiling existing approaches used by the project partners to promote key competences in vocational teacher education; reviewing existing courses and training, identifying shortcomings and errors, evaluating and taking stock of these data, and identifying good practice;

• Bilateral cooperation between partner countries through peer learning, with the general aim of improving VET systems’ responsiveness to global trends and the specific aim of developing a design thinking seminar;

• Piloting and evaluating the seminar;

• Integrating successful elements of the design thinking seminar into education systems and current teaching and learning methods as a shared approach.

Results

In retrospect, the results of DT4VET can be organised into four levels of impact:

Strategic and curricular measures

• The participating institutions developed a common framework embedding design thinking in the professional development of VET teachers.

• This framework sets minimum standards for learning objectives, process stages and reflective phases and is formulated to remain applicable across different national VET systems.

• Recommendations were also developed for education authorities on incorporating DT-related content into existing initial and continuing training regulations.

Development and testing of a continuing professional development seminar

• Drawing on a review of existing courses and a structured gap analysis, a modular seminar was designed to provide teachers with practical guidance on applying design thinking through five successive sequences.

• The modules combine input sessions, supervised group work and peer review; all working materials are available as open educational resources.

• Within a collaborative co-learning approach, individual seminar components were first agreed in small groups across partner countries, then delivered in full and finally reflected on collectively.

Evaluation and quality development

• The seminar was piloted in several rounds, collecting both quantitative feedback from participants and qualitative observations from instructors.

• According to the final report, the evaluation findings demonstrate that participants perceived substantial competence gains, particularly in collaborative problem-solving.

• Identified areas for improvement, such as adapting individual methods to different workshop or laboratory environments, were addressed in a revised version of the seminar.

Transfer into practice and policy

• Follow-up activities were initiated in all four partner countries to incorporate design thinking elements into existing courses or school-based professional development programmes.

• The project partners also agreed to use the framework developed as a reference in further EU projects, promoting wider adoption of the approach in the long term.

Overall, DT4VET documents, first, an applied approach to teachers’ continuing professional development that makes design thinking tangible methodologically, curricularly and organisationally, and, second, a series of practically tested steps for transferring this methodology to different VET contexts.