Design Thinking Instructions and Cognitive Processes

Abstract

In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, new jobs demand that the workforce should have several essential skills such as problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking and innovation skill. School education is the right time to impart these skills in young children who are members of the future workforce. Literature shows that several cognitive processes are at the core of these skills. These cognitive processes are also mentioned to be at the heart of the design thinking process, justifying the need for teaching design thinking process at the school education level. In the pedagogic context, the revised Bloom’s taxonomy defines 19 specific cognitive processes and classifies these into six major categories. With the help of this taxonomy framework, an attempt has been made to find the association between the instruction for activities within the ‘IISC design thinking’ process (a specific process that aims to optimise design thinking) and the cognitive processes. Results indicate that following the above instructions while performing IISC design thinking activities enable most of the cognitive processes recommended by Bloom, covering all his six categories. This has the potential to support the development of higher-level cognitive skills that are required for the twenty-first-century workforce.