Design Thinking Lesson Exemplars in Basic Education Toward a Transformative Instruction

Background: Lesson exemplars (LEs) present teachers' best practices for quality instruction, serving as a benchmark for others to innovate in their own classrooms, bringing transformative experiences that foster meaningful, lifelong learning.Aims: In this study, LEs were developed and validated, aligning with the design thinking (DT) as an instructional model.Methods: Descriptive development research was used as the study design, in which three developed LEs were validated by 10 expert teachers with respect to objectives, subject matter, procedures, evaluation, and assignment/agreement/take-home activities. The developed validation tool was then further validated by three expert educators, and the results were analyzed using Kappa Statistics (CVI=1.00; excellent). Moreover, the results of the dry run conducted with ten (10) teachers were analyzed using Cronbach’s Alpha to determine the instrument's reliability (α=0.8559; good). For the analysis of the results, descriptive statistics, such as mean, standard deviation, and rank, were used.Result: The study developed and validated design thinking-based lesson exemplars, making teachers capably blend the iterative, student-centered phases of design thinking (understanding, exploring, materializing) with the structured framework of conventional lesson plans, and received strong approval from teacher-experts for fostering creativity, collaboration, and real-world application across all domains.Conclusion: Results indicated that the design thinking-based lesson exemplars essentially merge structured planning with creativity, as validated by strong approval across all domains, confirming their innovation and learner-centered impact. It is recommended to implement the lesson exemplars in classrooms, assess their possible effectiveness through action research, and cascade them via teacher training.