Integrating design thinking into social work education : A scoping review of practices and identification of opportunities for curriculum innovation

The contemporary context of Australian social work education creates opportunities for social work educators to reimagine curriculum design and delivery. We propose that design thinking offers one means of broadening approaches to social work teaching in creative and innovative ways. With a focus on the application of knowledge to industry ‘problems’ and ‘person-centered’ solutions, design thinking may complement the social justice values of social work and help advance the social change mandate of the profession. In educational settings, it may encourage students to engage more actively in processes of knowledge translation and in the identification of person-centered solutions to social problems. Yet there is very little literature on the application of design thinking in the social sciences and even less specifically relevant to teaching social work. Our paper reports on an international scoping review (n = 73) of existing approaches to teaching design thinking in higher education settings and considers their potential application to creative and innovative social work curriculum. This research contributes to understandings of the potential of design thinking for critical social work education in a changing higher education context.