TEDxQUT Talk: Schools for the 21st century
The TEDx talk that led to a collaboration and a book
In October of 2024 I presented a TEDx talk at QUT about the importance of design in schools. I’ve been doing design research since 2004 and working on design in schools since 2011. This was a great opportunity to bring together some of my thoughts about how we should be teaching design in schools.
The core argument of the talk is that skills like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication are still in the background of K-12 schooling when, in the era of AI, they ought to be front and center as the most important thing. These four things are known as 21st century skills and they’ve been talked about for decades.
We’re more than a quarter of the way into the 21st century and schools still aren’t taking 21st century skills seriously. In the AI era, it’s more important than ever to focus on creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. This talk envisions a world in which design capabilities are taken as seriously in K-12 schooling as literacy and numeracy.
Design should be the subject where these skills get taught, but design isn’t taken seriously in schools in most countries in the world. It ought to be. Design often gets relegated to the background compared to the weighty subjects like English, mathematics, and science.
There are good reasons why schools haven’t adapted to teach 21st century skills well. There are systemic factors at play. The whole point of the designerly schools movement is to build the momentum needed to change this.
My colleague, Leighann Ness Wilson, was in the audience on the day I gave this TEDxQUT talk. She was doing her own work with a similar focus at the time and our conversations over the course of a year became the book that will be out in August of 2026, Taking Design Seriously in Education (Cambridge University Press).
The book starts with the personal, describing the significant influence that a book had on my life. The book is called We Make the Road by Walking, by the educators Myles Horton and Paulo Freire.
Becoming a capable designer is gives you agency in the world. Imagine a school system in which curriculum, the built environment, the assessment regime, and the pedagogy all supported students in becoming capable designers. It’s already starting to happen.
If you’re a teacher and you’re interested in becoming a part of the designerly schools movement then please do sign up for the Designerly Schools substack or write to me.