Theoretical foundations of design thinking - A constructivism learning approach to design thinking

Design Thinking has been a subject of teaching, research and real-life application in almost every domain and area of education, research and industrial endeavor for the past many years. This paper explains how to recognize the tenets of constructivist learning theory (constructivist principles) within the teaching-learning of the Design Thinking process. The research, established an integrative approach to theory, method, and practice by developing a taxonomy of constructivist principles to map the process and activities of design thinking. The paper further picks up the thread of developing and fine-tuning a Design Thinking course by presenting, what we call as the "constructivism tenets-design thinking dashboard" which, while being suitable for business schools (Master of Business Administration), is generic enough to be used with minimal modifications for any other domains where customer experience is important, which is the case for all human endeavours.