Making design thinking for education sustainable: Training preservice teachers to address practice challenges

The effectiveness of design thinking (DT) education is increasingly demonstrated; it allows teachers to face complex challenges in their day-to-day work. However, few teachers have training in this discipline. This study presents the 'Think-Create-Teach' (TCT) methodology to help preservice teachers to create instructional materials guided by DT. The TCT methodology is applied and assessed through quantitative methods in a project-based learning subject with 56 preservice teachers (experimental group). Subsequently, the work processes and instructional materials developed by the experimental group were compared to a control group of 52 preservice teachers who did not use TCT. The quantitative results were supported with qualitative methods to understand the reasoning behind. This paper demonstrates the TCT contribution to designing better instructional materials, its integration into the teaching curriculum, its validity as design training, and its ability to help teachers answer today's changing education. This paper shows that design discipline and the methodology proposed have a relevant role in the training of preservice teachers.