Professional Doctorate Thesis
Design thinking as a competency for educational leadership Performace in a new normal world
by Dr. Rita Lawarty
Research Overview
This conference paper, titled “Design Thinking as a Competency for Educational Leadership Performance in a New Normal World,” explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has created a critical opportunity to rethink educational systems and leadership approaches. It argues that rather than returning to traditional models, educational institutions should embrace innovative frameworks that respond to the complexities of a rapidly changing, hybrid learning environment. In this context, design thinking is presented as a powerful, human-centered approach that can help leaders navigate uncertainty, foster innovation, and improve organizational effectiveness.
The paper establishes that design thinking—characterized by empathy, creativity, experimentation, and problem-solving—is an underutilized yet highly valuable competency in educational leadership. It highlights that while design thinking has been widely adopted in business and other sectors, its application in education remains limited. The study connects leadership performance to key competency areas such as cognitive, emotional, and social intelligence, and suggests that integrating design thinking enhances leaders’ ability to address complex challenges, motivate stakeholders, and drive sustainable change.
A central contribution of the paper is the development of a conceptual framework (illustrated in Figure 2 on page 6), which links five core elements of design thinking—user focus, problem framing, visualization, experimentation, and diversity—to leadership performance. Each of these components is proposed to have a positive and significant relationship with how effectively leaders manage organizations. For example, user focus emphasizes human-centered decision-making, while experimentation and visualization support creative problem-solving and innovation.
The paper concludes that adopting design thinking as a leadership competency can transform educational organizations by promoting holistic problem-solving, fostering adaptability, and improving decision-making processes. It emphasizes that leadership in the “new normal” requires more than technical skills—it demands empathy-driven, flexible, and innovative thinking. The study also highlights the need for further empirical research and broader application across different contexts to validate and expand the proposed framework. Overall, it positions design thinking as a strategic tool for enhancing leadership performance and driving meaningful educational reform in a post-pandemic world.