Professional Development of Teachers to promote Design Thinking Skills and Academic Success of Students Erasmus Project

Project Title

Professional Development of Teachers to promote Design Thinking Skills and Academic Success of Students

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Design thinking is a learning approach that focuses on developing students’ creative confidence. Design includes many elements such as thinking, developing empathy, promoting action-oriented prejudices, directing thinking, developing meta-cognitive awareness, being active, problem solving, and using one’s imagination. Through design-oriented thinking, the pedagogical repertoire of teachers is expanded (AEÜSBED,2019).The design-oriented thinking process begins with the definition of a problem. It involves research and the ranking of priorities that often compete with each other. It tests the applicability of multiple solutions with prototypes and ends with the social evaluation of objects. (Davis, 1998).Considering that the most important factor in individuals’ lives is creative problem solving, design thinking is a highly functional approach to finding creative solutions to complex problems. (Carroll, Goldman, Britos, Koh, Royalty and Hornstein, 2010; Vande Zande, Warnock, Nikoomanesh and Van Dexter, 2014).Design thinking supports students ‘critical thinking, social development, team work skills, and students’ academic performance. It increases students ‘academic performance by contributing to students’ understanding, identification and analysis process (Carroll et al., 2010; Vande Zande et al., 2014; Watson, 2015).

According to the data obtained from European Commission, over %46 of youths are at risk of social exclusion since the education system has not been successful to prepare and maintain teachers and trainers with high-performance in order to provide their learners with practical and authentic skills. Correspondingly, the learners lack of guidance, applicable and life context skills which are creative thinking, problem solving and collaboration skills, so they are left with a few options like early school drop-out. Low academic success is one of the variables that can be the predictor of school dropout alone. Low academic success leading to school dropout damages the self-esteem of the individual and creates a sense of loss of control (Agnew, 1992).There are many studies that found that low academic level and low grades are strong predictors of school dropout (Alexander, Entwise and Kabbani, 2001; Goldschmidt and Wang, 1999; Rumberger, 1995).

In line with all these requirements and the data (COE), it is clear that there is a gap in academic success of teachers to prevent early school leaving by providing their learners with applicable skills and guidance. This project will bridge this gap through the training modules based on design thinking skills.

The project aims at increasing academic success of teachers, supporting professional development of educators, empowering teachers/trainers/educators with resources to teach design thinking skills, equipping teachers with a design thinking mindset, facilitating the adoption of design thinking educational practices, strengthening the capacity of educational authorities, policymakers and decision makers to promote and mainstream design-thinking educational practices, as well as decreasing early school drop-out through the following intellectual outputs:

– Methodological Framework for Design Thinking Skills in Secondary Schools
– Training Content for Teachers and Online Learning Platform
– Instructional Guide and Practical Resources to Promote Design Thinking Skills
– Recommendation Paper to promote Design Thinking Skills in Education

The target groups are teachers, trainers, educators, decision-makers, policymakers, and educational authorities.

The project will involve the following participants in different activities of the project;
60 teachers for analysis of the current situation in Design Thinking Skills education
15 teachers for testing the platform and contents
40 participants in national pilot trainings
145 participants of teachers, educators, policy makers, educational authorities and academics in multiplier events.

This project will have a direct impact on improving the academic success with design thinking approach in multi-disciplinary areas in education and enhancing the instructional capacity of teaching staff.

The envisaged impact will be increased social inclusion of European students through mainstream design thinking education at schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 178811 Eur

Project Coordinator

ISTANBUL MILLI EGITIM MUDURLUGU & Country: TR

Project Partners

• ISTANBUL VALILIGI
• SOUTH-WEST UNIVERSITY NEOFIT RILSKI
• YILDIZ TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
• VIRTUAL CAMPUS LDA
• EUROPEAN TRAINING AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATION FOR A COOPERATION KEY TO BUSINESS