Use a design thinking process with Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test stages to reimagine school safety¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The guide recommends design thinking as a human-centered, recursive framework for transforming complex adaptive systems: "A recursive process, design thinking has several distinct stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test." Teams spend considerable time in the Empathize problem space gathering information from community members before defining the problem, then generate many possible strategies before prototyping and testing. The process draws on the National Equity Project's Liberatory Design principles by centering equity and shifting who holds power and agency in the design process.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Assemble a team including individuals with different areas of expertise representing various groups, with varying degrees of positional and social power.

Constraints¶

• The guide notes the process is not linear and teams need to move between stages more than once, and that there will be unintended consequences to any solution or change effort.

Target Learners¶

• educators
• school leaders
• district administrators

Target Learning Goals¶

• equity-centered school safety framework design
• collaborative systems change

Affordances¶

• School Safety Complex Adaptive System

Related Strategies¶

• Design Thinking
• Use iterative design with short feedback loops and multiple user-feedback methods during product development
• Integrate co-design and continuous feedback loops into AI evaluation processes
• Use the DOT Framework's Empathize and Test/Feedback stages as practical checklists, and build professional learning communities around shared prompting and critique practices
• Distance from broad global solutions and design education around specific local needs, letting communities decide the purpose school serves

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Trout, L., Pate, C., Wu, K., & McKenna, J. (2022). Reimagining school safety: A guide for schools and communities. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED628885