A Systematic Literature Review of Design Thinking Application in STEM Integration

Abstract

To date, the emphasis on STEM integration in education is increasing since the way of thinking acquired through silo approach in traditional learning is not enough to understand and solve real-world problems. Design and design thinking have become increasingly important in STEM education as they are indispensable to creativity, problem solving and innovation. Nevertheless, little attention is given to this field. This study aims to identify the suitable teaching and learning approaches that apply design thinking for STEM integration among students by examining the available literatures. Providing students with the STEM skills can be acquired by adopting new approaches to teaching and learning across the STEM disciplines. For this systematic literature review, six databases were used which produced a total of 7209 articles. Identical articles were removed, and the data set was reduced by using three eligibility criteria in line with the research question, resulting in only 7 articles were chosen as samples for the study. The findings identified the suitable teaching and learning approaches that apply design thinking for STEM integration in education are focused on problem solving, designing activity and collaborative learning. The implications of the study allowed teachers and stakeholders to integrate STEM by applying design thinking through suitable approaches such as problem-focused teaching and learning, design learning and teamwork learning. The recommendation for future research is to conduct a study to see the effectiveness of problem-focused teaching and learning in applying design thinking for STEM integration.