This paper present three lenses for interpreting design thinking: a framework on learning to become professionals, and two interpretations of this framework that speak broadly to aspects of "design thinking". The first lens draws on a framework for "an embodied understanding of professional practice" and provides a way to describe how professionals form and organize their knowledge and skills into a particular "professional-way-of-being". The second and third lenses provide examples of using this framework to interpret existing results from phenomenographic studies on ways of experiencing design and ways of experiencing cross-disciplinary practice. We conclude with a discussion of how these three lenses contribute to a working synthesis of design thinking and learning.

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Situated learning in professional practice is increasingly recognized as a key component of engineering curricula. One challenge in this context is to establish a reflexive link between the students' learning at university and their experiences in practice. This paper proposes the Accidental Competency discourse as an alternative tool to support students' experiential learning through reflection on critical learning events. The procedure was initially developed as a research tool to investigate competence formation in engineering students from a systems perspective. This paper presents the semi-structured focus group protocol and points to ways this can be implemented as a reflexive tool in cooperative learning. The description specifically focuses on the practicalities of facilitating an Accidental Competency discourse in focus groups with students. The Accidental Competency discourse was trialed in ten focus groups with engineering students. Initial data from participant feedback indicates that the procedure facilitated student reflection. On the basis of these results the benefits and limitations of the procedure in relation to other reflexive approaches are discussed. The paper concludes with an outlook on the implementation of the Accidental Competency discourse as an asynchronous online tool.

is a PhD student in the School of Engineering at the University of Queensland and a member of the Catalyst Research Centre for Society and Technology. He has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical & Space) and a Bachelor of Science (Physics) from UQ, as well as a Graduate Certificate of Education (Higher Education). Major research interests include; Engineering Education, Sustainability, Teaching and Learning, Engineering Design, Technology and Society. Gloria Dall'Alba, University of Queensland GLORIA DALL'ALBA teaches and researches in the area of teaching and learning in higher education in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. She has a particular interest in professional education, learning in the workplace, and questions of research methodology. She has published articles in international journals such as Learning and Instruction, International Journal of Educational Research, and Studies in Higher Education. A forthcoming book, Learning to be a professional, will be published by Springer. She is guest editor for a special edition of the journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory, on phenomenology and education.

Creativity is essential in the engineering design process. Researchers, academics, educators, and engineering organisations all agree that further improvement is necessary in training methods for fostering creativity in engineering education. Even though studies exist about how creativity should be taught in engineering education, there is still limited research about the challenges of practical implementation. To address this gap, an action research project has been conducted in two undergraduate Mechanical Engineering design subjects at a prominent university in Australia with the aim of enhancing creativity during the problem-solving process. The study shows the many challenges that arose when enhancing creativity in engineering design education, and the issues that surrounded this implementation. Although teaching creativity to engineering students is a challenge, this study illuminates the difficulties of convincing the engineering instructors to embed creativity in the subjects they teach. Overall, the study found that instructors' understandings and beliefs about creativity influence their teaching approach and what they value. These influences were around four main areas: the instructors' focus on the design product being produced, their educational backgrounds and training, the subjective nature of creativity and their beliefs about it, and the performance mindset of the instructors. These findings suggest that enhancing creativity among engineering students is not possible until the engineering educators and practitioners understand and value creativity practice.

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His research draws on and involves collaboration with the social sciences including education and anthropology.