Design Thinking in Educational Leadership

Abstract

Schools, in today's world, are more special than other organisations since they combine organisation and community attributes. The old leadership paradigm is no longer appropriate due to the complexity of educational organisations. This chapter redefines educational leadership in the modern era and makes a case for educational leadership reform by looking at the history of educational leadership philosophy. The chapter discusses how to apply design thinking to the educational environment and support educational leaders at different levels in the education context by introducing design thinking, a mature design thinking process framework, and the application of idea generation, decision making, and educational leadership from the five stages of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The potential challenges and limitations of contemporary educational leadership are discussed in different sections. It also proposes future educational leadership research directions from the perspectives of three primary stakeholders: teachers, students, and schools.