School innovation expert John B. Nash demonstrates how design thinking can be adapted successfully by busy school leaders seeking student-centered solutions to a range of challenges. Based on a decade of work teaching school leaders nationally and internationally, Design Thinking in Schools shows how leaders can adopt a design thinking mindset to uncover problems and harness the ideas and energy of students and other stakeholders to create unique, effective solutions within a single semester or school year. The book is a step-by-step guide that offers critical guidance and field‐tested tools for choosing design teams, developing prototypes, and selecting promising ideas to take to scale. It includes rich examples of educators at the elementary, middle, and high school level who have used design thinking to find creative solutions for improving student engagement, school climate, and parent-teacher conferences, among many other challenges. Nash illustrates how school leaders can use the design thinking process to access a range of student voices for a diversity of opinions and feedback on topics that better inform school change. Lively and inspiring, Design Thinking in Schools is a critical resource for school leaders seeking to leverage the untapped wealth of knowledge and experience contained within their own buildings to make schools innovative places of learning. "[T]his book is a worthwhile resource for those seeking to learn to systemically apply design in education and to effect change and improvement for the schools and students they serve." - Teachers College Record "[T]here is much that any educational leader or practitioner interested in design thinking will like and find useful in the book." -Teachers College Record "Schools were not built for the adults who work there. They were built for the students and the communities they serve. John Nash provides a 'how-to' guide for using design thinking principles in our schools. When we understand and empathize with our end users, we are able to create and test possible solutions to any problem we face. If you follow the blueprint laid out by Nash, you will be able to meet the changing needs of the next generation of students."--Nick Polyak, superintendent, Leyden School District 212, Illinois "The education sector continues to careen into a period of social change of historical proportions, and Design Thinking in Schools is perfectly timed for school leaders navigating turbulent waters. This accessible guide for school change keeps students and teachers at the center of the work to ensure deep, meaningful, sustainable, and long overdue shifts in traditional schooling."--Chad S. Ratliff, lab schools principal, Albemarle County Public Schools, Virginia John B. Nash is department chair and associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky.  John is a specialist in the design and prototyping of innovations in education. He teaches courses on design thinking, school technology leadership, and school reform. His current research agenda focuses on the methods to design and prototype innovations in education. John is also the director of UK's Laboratory on Design Thinking in Education (dLab).  The dLab promotes and studies the application of human-centered design, bringing community members together to create new solutions to previously unsolved challenges.  John has held positions as faculty at Iowa State University and the University of Texas at El Paso and as a social research scientist at Stanford University. At Stanford, John held associate directorship positions in two laboratories: the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (SCIL), and the Stanford Learning Laboratory, where he managed interdisciplinary and international teams of research scientists examining the effects of innovative technologies on learning. While at Stanford he co-founded the Open Eye Group, a firm with headquarters in the U.S. and Sweden, focused on bringing design thinking to schools and communities.