Katja, you can check some of my publications. You will find very good hints there. I am really very much in favour of Design Thinking - it is a really great method!

1.        A. Lugmayr, B. Stockleben, Y. Zou, S. Anzenhofer, and M. Jalonen, “Applying Design Thinking in the context of media management education,” Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2013, pp. 1–39 Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-013-1361-8.

1.       A. Lugmayr. Applying "Design Thinking" as method for teaching in media education. In A. Lugmayr, H. Franssila, C. Safran, and I. Hammouda, editors, Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Confernece: Envisioning Future Media Environments, pages 332–334, Tampere, Finland, 2011. MindTrek Ry, Tampere Univ. of Technology (TUT).

1.       A. Lugmayr, M. Jalonen, Y. Zou, L. Libin, and S. Anzenhofer. "Design Thinking" in media management education - a practical hands-on approach. In A. Lugmayr, T. Risse, B. Stockleben, J. Kaario, B. Pogorelc, and E. S. Asensio, editors, 4th Semantic Ambient Media Experience (SAME) Workshop in Conjunction with the 5th International Convergence on Communities and Technologies, Brisbane, Australia, June 2011. Tampere Univ. of Technology (TUT).

Thank you Artur for all your references. I will read you papers with a lot of interest!

Martina, I also went to the website of your project. I tried to download the handbook, but it is not longer available (http://www.t-h-inker.net/content/design-inquiry-manual). Could you please send me the pdf? I would appreciate this very much.

I use basic design principles for carpe diem learning design.

It's  very successful- 110 units(modules) already re/designed this year at the University of Western Australia 

gillysalmon.com/carpe-diem

You could check out D School http://dschool.stanford.edu/

Thank you Gilly and Ruth for your input. I know the dschool project, very interesting!

I have always thought an experiment that I heard about in medical education used remarkably similar ideas to design education.  I think it was Toronto Scarborough but I might wrong.  The idea was that students learned by doing and by solving problems rather than by theory and lectures.  Actors were hired to appear as patients who presented symptoms.  The students then worked in groups to generate a diagnosis and a treatment pattern.  This then in turn took them into the library and to discover theory.  Of course they immediately knew why they needed the theory.

How very encouraging to stumble across this thread.

I am working with design thinking in a more obvious way...I have just completed an analysis of the place of designerly thinking in Technology education in NZ...and about to trim down into a paper. Meanwhile there is a a review as we speak with some like minded educators and researchers attempting to convince the ministry of education of the worth of developing design thinking within Technology education.

On another note, it is my long term evil plan to use design thinking to liberate NZ education...but you know, good things take time.

I did do a bit of research into design ideas and how ideas develop between secondary and tertiary students that may be of some interest?

Article An exploration of foundational design thinking across educat...

Hi Katja, a few years back I published a paper where I describe how I used a designerly DIY (do-it-yourself) approach with my students:

Simeone, L., Lupi, G., Patelli, P., Iaconesi, S., Persico, O. (2012) DIY GIS. Proceedings of IEEE ICALT, Rome (Italy), 7-10 July 2012.

It might perhaps be of some interest.

You can find a list of articles about use or DT to improve education

http://www.esad.pt/documents/144/attachments-d-think-report.pdf

Agree with @Demelza Cusens.

Kind regards