Reimagining School Visions through Design Thinking for Transform-ative Educational Leadership
Parole chiave:
School Vision; Professional Creativity; Design Thinking; Transformative LeadershipAbstract
In the post-digital educational landscape, this study explores how school vision functions as a generative and epistemic device for professional learning and organizational transformation. Drawing on the collaboration between INDIRE and the municipality of Rho (Milan), the research investigates how Design Thinking (DT) supports schools in co-constructing authentic, inclusive, and actionable visions aligned with their educational goals. Using a design-based qualitative approach, six schools have been engaged in iterative cycles of empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. The findings show that vision-building operates as a form of collective and situated creativity, enabling educators to reframe tensions, articulate shared values, and design context-sensitive strategies. DT also fostered transformative and distributed leadership practices grounded in care, dialogue, and coherence, extending beyond individual schools to create community alliances. Integrating these visions into institutional frameworks (PTOF, RAV, PdM) proved to be a critical act of strategic sense-making rather than a bureaucratic exercise. The study argues that vision-making through DT redefines innovation as a relational and reflective practice, positioning schools as living systems capable of imagining and enacting sustainable futures.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Giuseppina Rita Jose Mangione, Lydia Zampolini , Stefania Chipa , Paola Nencioni
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