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The demand for learning Design Thinking (DT) as a path towards acquiring 21st-century skills has increased globally in the last decade. Because DT education originated in the Silicon Valley context of the d.school at Stanford, it is important to evaluate how the teaching of the methodology adapts to different cultural contexts.The thesis explores the impact of the socio-cultural context on DT education.
DT institutes in Cape Town, South Africa and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were visited to observe their programs and conduct 22 semistructured interviews with local educators regarding their adaption strategies. Grounded theory methodology was used to develop a model of Socio-Cultural Adaptation of Design Thinking Education that maps these strategies onto five dimensions: Planning, Process, People, Place, and Presentation. Based on this model, a list of recommendations is provided to help DT educators and practitioners in designing and delivering culturally inclusive DT education.
Is There a Rural Penalty in Language Acquisition? Evidence From Germany's Refugee Allocation Policy
(2022)
Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the “null effect” is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers.