The centrality of design in educational contexts.

In everyday life we set ourselves goals to be completed: we have ideas, thoughts, dreams, but it is only by putting them into practice that we can realize them. This is the design. Designing means creating a path, a path with various steps, so that we can achieve the set goal, to satisfy a need. This is especially true in the educational field: designing transforms the ideas of an educator, teacher, into reality, changing the future, improving it. It is in this perspective that we intend to deal with the question of design in educational contexts, with the reconstruction of the theoretical framework of reference, with the main observational, declarative, connective, methodological, relational, transformative and evaluative characteristics. With the analysis of the two main approaches to educational design, linear and circular, we want to highlight the importance of design competence, interpreted as the ability to transform the theoretical elaborations of problems and needs into practical actions that solve them.