Mindset for Teachers as Designers

We had two primary objectives: 1. Develop a comprehensive Teachers as Designers mindsets framework, co-designed with designers and educators from Denmark, Spain, and Finland, to clarify the role o...

We had two primary objectives: 1. Develop a comprehensive Teachers as Designers mindsets framework, co-designed with designers and educators from Denmark, Spain, and Finland, to clarify the role of teachers as designers within the VET sector. 2. Utilize design thinking and co-creation methodologies to design educational interventions aimed at cultivating the mindsets identified in the Teachers as Designers framework.

We executed five primary activities: A1: Project Management and Implementation to ensure the successful achievement of project objectives. A2: Identification and Description of Design Mindsets for Teachers. This involved conducting a comprehensive literature review to identify design mindsets. Additionally, we conducted 11 interviews with designers and 3 facilitated co-design sessions with teachers to validate and gain a deeper understanding of these mindsets. A3: Design Thinking Process. We utilized the insights gathered from Activity 2 to initiate a full design thinking process aimed at generating innovative learning activities to foster teacher-as-designer mindsets. We created a prototype to be tested with teachers. A4: Co-Creation Sessions with Teachers. 3 Collaborative sessions were conducted with teachers, during which they were introduced to our high-fidelity prototype of a tool designed to develop these mindsets. Feedback obtained from teachers was then used to generate recommendations for professional development activities for VET educators. A5: Dissemination and Communication. Through various channels such as webinars, conference presentations, and the creation of a webpage, we disseminated the teacher-as-designer minds

The concrete outputs and results of our project include: 1) Teachers as Designers (TasD) Mindsets Framework: We developed a comprehensive framework outlining the essential mindsets for teachers functioning as designers within the VET sector. This framework provides a definition, trails, and an application example of each mindset. 2) A Learning Activity to Develop TasD Mindsets: we created a learning activity aimed at nurturing the identified TasD mindsets, in the form of Mindset Learning Cards, which serve as a training tool to facilitate mindset development among VET teachers. 3) Guidelines for Professional Development Programs: we created a set of design principles for the design and implementation of professional development programs tailored to foster TasD mindsets among VET educators. This document provides specific references (practical and academic) to get into the field of applying design into the educational sector.