Using an IDEAS acronym to rethink aspects of ‘Design Thinking’ as part of ‘everyday’ designing.

This paper examines the teaching of a ‘Design’ based activity located in the English Secondary school (students aged 11-18) education system and is focused on the area of the curriculum related to the promotion of ‘Design Thinking’. Through the use of a memorable acronym students were engaged in rethinking their everyday ‘design thinking’ strategies through the employment of metacognitive approaches. The acronym of ‘IDEAS’, of which each letter relates to an identified ‘cognitive limitation’, was used to challenge existing ‘design thinking’, heuristic, strategies and as a consequence students were challenged to rethink assumptions of robust decision-making in their pursuit of problem resolution. The paper draws upon psychological literature as well as Bourdieu’s sociological concept of ‘habitus’ to try to untangle the complexities of designing in an education environment and reveals the opportunities for the promotion of autonomous decision-making within such learning environments.