Overview

The Stanford d.school K12 Lab Network offers professional development experiences that bring the power of design thinking to educators and school leaders working to transform K–12 education. Based at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, the K12 Lab aims to obliterate opportunity gaps in education by designing more equitable models and sharing creative approaches with students and educators worldwide. The K12 Lab designs immersive, multi-day workshops and shorter introductory events that inspire educators to creatively engage with their students, content, school, and community. Their professional development goes beyond teaching design thinking as a methodology—it cultivates the creative confidence educators need to experiment, iterate, and innovate in their own contexts. Participants develop skills in human-centred design, including negotiation, empathy-building, prototyping, and collaborative problem-solving, all applied to real educational challenges. The K12 Lab also offers custom professional development for schools and districts, office hours where educators can share their design thinking prototypes with d.school coaches, and an extensive library of freely available curriculum materials and workshop resources. They catalyse a national and international network of schools and organisations working to integrate design thinking into their curriculum and leadership practices, and host education fellows who experiment on key innovation questions in the sector. This professional development is ideal for educators, administrators, and education leaders who want to develop creative problem-solving skills and bring human-centred design approaches into their schools and classrooms.