Meeting the Challenges of STEM education in K-12 Education through Design Thinking

Oct 15, 2026

This paper investigates how design thinking (DT) can address challenges in STEM education for K-12 learners. It combines an extensive literature review on STEM education and DT with exploratory research on Turkey’s context. Results show key barriers: difficulty integrating multiple disciplines and technologies, teacher and student training that favors result-oriented rather than process-oriented learning, and challenges in engineering-design-based problem solving. The study highlights the need for teacher collaboration, age-appropriate STEM activities, and role-based support so DT can resolve these issues.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Design thinking (DT)

STEM education

Meeting the Challenges of STEM education in K-12 Education through Design Thinking Ahsen Öztürk, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Turkey Abstract This paper explores the ways in which the design thinking (DT) approach can be utilized in addressing the challenges of STEM education in K-12 education. The study is based on an extensive literature review about STEM education and the DT approach, and exploratory research conducted to understand the challenges and needs of STEM education in Turkey. The findings from the exploratory research indicate that STEM education in Turkey has significant challenges: The teachers have difficulties in integrating diverse disciplines and technologies into their STEM activities; the training programs for teachers and the general education for students encourage a result-oriented mindset rather than a process-oriented approach; and the teachers have difficulties in following the problem-solving process based on the engineering design approach. Furthermore, collaboration among teachers for developing and implementing STEM activities needs to be addressed as an important issue in terms of scheduling. Additionally, there is a need to develop STEM activities appropriate to the educational level of students. Equipping teachers with skills and knowledge appropriate to their new roles as guides and mentors should also be considered as a significant issue concerning the implementation of STEM activities. The study concludes that the DT approach as an interdisciplinary, collaborative, and human-centered problem-solving process can support STEM education and resolve the stated challenges. This study also suggests that there is a need to develop a customized DT approach for teachers, non-designers, so that they can easily apply their expertise to STEM education. Keywords STEM education, design thinking, design thinking for educators, design thinking in education, design thinking in STEM education in Turkey, design thinking in K-12 education Introduction STEM education aims to integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines, and has become widespread in Turkey in the last decade. However, the local and international works of literature show a tendency towards including a wide range of disciplines in STEM education (Ministry of National Education, 2016; Carrell, Keaty & Wong, 2020) . There is also a need to design and implement the STEM activities appropriate to the educational level of students (Bruce-Davis et al., 2014; Uştu, 2019) . Both works of literature further highlight the need for collaboration among teachers for the implementation of STEM education (Margot & Kettler, 2019; Akgündüz et al., 2015) . Design thinking (DT) is defined as a method to identify and solve problems in a human-centered way, and it has been applied in K-12 education to address a variety of challenges (Tran, 2017) . This paper explores how the DT approach can be utilized to support STEM education and resolve the challenges it presents. With this purpose, the study is based on a literature review about STEM education and the DT approach, and exploratory research that reveals the challenges and needs of STEM education in Turkey. This paper concludes by suggesting ways on how the DT approach can be used in STEM education. STEM education The acronym“STEM” stands for the first letters of science (S), technology (T), engineering (E), and mathematics (M), and in the literature, there are multiple definitions or perspectives on STEM education. However, common characteristics of STEM education can be found around the following: engaging students in real-world problem-solving, employing student-centered pedagogies, connecting STEM disciplines, and supporting the development of students’ 21stcentury skills (Moore et al., 2014) . Although STEM may be perceived as a simple acronym, many variants of STEM approaches that tend to integrate non-STEM disciplines into STEM education have been discovered in b

FAQs

What is the main focus of the study?

The study focuses on using the design thinking (DT) approach to address challenges in K-12 STEM education, especially in the Turkish context.

What major challenges in STEM education in Turkey are identified?

The findings report difficulties integrating diverse disciplines and technologies, training programs that emphasize outcomes over processes, and difficulties following the problem-solving process of the engineering design approach.

How does the paper conclude DT could help STEM education?

It concludes that DT—interdisciplinary, collaborative, and human-centered problem solving—can support STEM education and help resolve the stated challenges, while also suggesting a need for a customized DT approach for teachers and non-designers.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by LangkahRina