Design thinking as a framework for developing AI-ready teachers: Introducing the DT-ART model

Анотація

Artificial intelligence is reshaping teaching, assessment, and classroom decision-making, yet teacher education programmes often remain insufficiently prepared to respond in pedagogically coherent ways. This conceptual paper develops the Design Thinking for AI-Ready Teaching (DT-ART) model as an original theoretical contribution to teacher education scholarship. Rather than simply transferring design thinking to AI education, DT-ART reconceptualises AI readiness as a recursive design capability: the capacity to diagnose AI-mediated pedagogical problems, negotiate ethical and contextual constraints, prototype human-centred instructional responses, and use evidence from practice to revise both tools and professional judgement. The model integrates design epistemology, AI competency frameworks, technological pedagogical content knowledge, and reflective professional learning into a generative framework organised around five mutually reinforcing mechanisms: contextual sensemaking, ethical problem-framing, human-AI co-ideation, pedagogical prototyping, and evidence-informed professional judgement. The paper clarifies how DT-ART differs from the Stanford design thinking sequence, explains the theoretical logic linking AI competencies to design processes, and proposes a validation agenda comprising expert review, Delphi consensus-building, design-based implementation, and mixed-methods evaluation. In doing so, the article offers a stronger conceptual basis for preparing teachers who can respond critically, creatively, and responsibly to AI-infused educational environments.