Design thinking is a cognitive approach about creating a solution to an identified problem. It is a complex thinking process whereby an abstract idea evolves into a concrete solution using a ‘problem-to-solution’ iterative design approach. The concept of design thinking is more commonly associated with design professionals such as graphic artists, architects and engineers, and less so with teachers. Our research, however, has identified that teachers do engage in design thinking when designing learning experiences for their students. Through a qualitative multi-phase study of 32 Australian primary school teachers (17 expert, 15 novice), we examined how teachers exhibit design thinking characteristics during the planning and implementation of teaching programs. Our analysis revealed that all participants demonstrated at least two of the seven established design thinking characteristics from the literature, with expert teachers generally showing more characteristics than novices. Most notably, all participants exhibited both human-centered concern and predisposition toward multifunctionality in their design approach. Additionally, we identified two teacher-specific design thinking characteristics: deliberately delaying design detail and continuing to design while teaching. These unique characteristics reflect how teachers adapt their designs in response to student needs and classroom dynamics. Our findings establish that teachers are indeed designers, albeit with profession-specific characteristics that distinguish their design thinking from other design fields. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of teacher design work and has implications for both teacher education and professional development. In this chapter we provide a synthesis of design thinking characteristics from the literature. Then, we present evidence from our research about how teachers exhibit design thinking characteristics; both those identified in the literature and ones we have identified specific to teaching. Finally, we summarise our findings in a table, which we consider to be teacher design thinking characteristics.