Design Thinking for English Teachers: The Unique Value of Improving Teaching Practice

Abstract

English teachers usually decide on the direction and methods of teaching improvement based on their usual thinking. The current interdisciplinary-themed teaching has become a new requirement for implementing core competencies in English curriculum teaching, posing more significant challenges to teachers. Design thinking for educators can provide ideas for solving this problem. By using design thinking, teachers can choose specific challenging problems to improve teaching. Through a series of processes, they collect issues and ideas, identify the best methods to solve problems, and through prototype testing and improvement, create feasible solutions for teaching to overcome the most challenging issues at present. Through in-depth interviews with teachers and students, research has found that design thinking can play a role as a methodology in primary school English teaching, helping teachers design appropriate interdisciplinary English learning activities stimulating students' interest in English learning, creating new ideas for teaching improvement.