Building curious classrooms: The rise of design thinking in schools
A quiet revolution is underway in Indian classrooms, where rote learning is giving way to curiosity, making and empathy. At the heart of this revolution is design thinking. Instead of memorising answers, students are learning to ask better questions, build prototypes, test ideas and work with purpose, because the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has provided a significant impetus to this revolution by advocating experiential, competency-based and multidisciplinary learning, the three principles that are natural companions to design education.
Institutions such as Anant National University and its Centre of Design Education (CODE) support schools in sustainably embedding these principles, so that design thinking becomes a culture, not a one-off workshop, enabling a powerful trio of capabilities, often called Head, Heart and Hands. Head is inquiry, observation, systems thinking, framing the right problem, while Heart is empathy, collaboration, cultural grounding and ethics. Hands is the craft of prototyping, iterating, exploring materials and building workable solutions.
Design thinking feels deeply Indian in spirit. It echoes Gandhi’s NaiTalim, Tagore’s Santiniketan and the craft apprenticeships of the past. It also delivers on the competencies that the future demands, including creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication, consequently turning students from passive recipients to agile problem-solvers who can navigate ambiguity and imagine better alternatives.
Indian schools are bringing design thinking to life in two complementary ways. First, as a method within subjects, such as prototyping to test scientific hypotheses, 3D modelling to make geometry tangible and data storytelling to bring history and social science alive. When teachers base these projects in local contexts and indigenous knowledge, students experience relevance and pride. Secondly, design thinking is being introduced as a subject in its own right, with modules on design thinking, visual communication, product and environmental design, sustainability and human-centred innovation, where students learn to empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test and iterate, mimicking the processes of real-world studios and innovation cycles.
As India’s premier design university, Anant promotes contemporary design education through CODE by partnering with schools to align with NEP 2020 and the Indian context. This transformation begins with teachers, through sensitisation, co-teaching, and reflective practice, empowering them to shift from delivering content to coaching design processes.
CODE helps co-create NEP-aligned curricula for grades 6-12, and establishes resource ecosystems, such as materials and tool libraries, and digital repositories, so that, over time, this builds continuity for students as projects grow in depth and complexity. The key message is unambiguous: design for India using local materials, crafts and community needs and not importing models that don’t fit the context. Seasonal intensives, such as Anant’s Summer Workshop, anchor this journey. These initiatives are high-energy entry points, where students absorb studio habits like keen observation, sketching, prototyping, critique and reflection. They are mentored by industry experts, and they work with real tools, giving them hands-on learning experience. Most themes align around sustainability, local crafts and community challenges, converting empathy to real-world outcomes. Story-based programmes, such as Mind on a Mission: The Quest for the Lost Blueprint, gamify the experience across Product Design, Communication Design, Photography, Fashion and Textiles and Animation, where students go through a complete design cycle, working in teams, ending with a showcase that ties all together.
The Winter Workshop further amplifies this learning. Students take on longer projects and field immersions, carrying out user research, iterating prototypes and presenting decisions through critiques, often linking outcomes to school goals and NEP competencies. The winter workshops also include sustainability sprints, craft-tech mashups and community-centred innovation briefs. The result is dedicated time and space for students to consolidate skills and develop their personal design voice.
Together, the summer and winter offerings frame the academic year, igniting a spark in the summer and building mastery in the winter. These workshops also equip teachers with portable playbooks that they can bring back to their classrooms. Successful implementation begins with pedagogy, not procurement, because when schools start by pedagogically transforming teachers, through sensitisation, co-teaching, and reflection, design thinking is not reduced to a one-off activity or tool-heavy workshop.
Context matters, as using local materials, heritage crafts and community needs makes learning more relevant and meaningful. Even lean resource ecosystems like simple materials libraries and basic fabrication tools can sustain low-cost making over time, while assessment should measure what we truly value: beyond content recall, formative rubrics can capture curiosity, collaboration, craft and care, mapped to Head, Heart and Hands. Consequently, pilot-document-iterate-scale can help schools refine with evidence and grow what works, and you can feel the difference in outcomes, as classrooms transform from compliance to curiosity, learning converges with data and storytelling, science and art, tradition and technology, and culture evolves with studios that normalise critique, iteration and peer learning.
From performance to problem-solving, education transforms to build resilience, ethics and comfort with ambiguity, and from discipline to mindset, design thinking prepares citizens to sense needs, frame problems, rally teams, craft solutions, and iterate over time, which is not optional, but foundational, in a country as diverse and dynamic as India. In NEP 2020’s roots, our rich pedagogical traditions, and partnership with organisations like Anant’s CODE, especially through its Summer and Winter Workshops, Indian schools are preparing students for tomorrow, curious, compassionate and ready to build the futures they imagine.
(The author is Associate Professor, School of Design, Anant National University)