Design Thinking and Immersive Professional Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

Through their personalized practices, experienced educators develop two professional acts: knowing-in-action and reflecting-in-action. Novice educators grapple to understand these actions when witnessing experienced educators choose to adopt/adapt new technologies, differentiate instructional strategies, or promote new educational reforms into their classrooms. Using a design-based research approach, the authors' work suggests novice educators may require immersive professional learning opportunities to develop pedagogical empathy. Pedagogical empathy means fostering a receptiveness of other educators' professional choices (empathy) based on known theories, methods and practices of teaching and learning (pedagogy). The authors discuss their findings when introducing a human-centered design thinking process using a design challenge, collaborative prototyping, and multiple levels of reflection with experienced and novice educators. This chapter shares two years of research informed experience with educators at various stages of their careers in both western Canada and Tanzania.