Service design thinking method for educational leaders

Leading educational work can be a challenge as it includes guiding many different stakeholder groups. This study presents the service design process used to develop a service mobile application aimed at supporting the work of school principals in Finnish Lapland. Design thinking and Double Diamond are co-creative processes used by service designers to approach problems. In these processes, users play a central role in co-designing the service together with the service designers and other relevant stakeholders. This chapter describes the design thinking and Double Diamond methods in more detail and suggests how they can be utilised in the field of educational leadership by using participatory approaches to deal with complex social issues. While design thinking has been implemented widely in management education, it has rarely been applied to educational leadership. However, schools can be viewed as services where several interactions take place and where value is co-created. This study investigates how service design thinking can be applied in educational leadership. The data are based on focus groups and a research diary with field notes. A detailed literature review on how service design has been utilised in educational leadership is also included.