Teachers' awareness of design thinking is a precondition for its use in classrooms, yet the term is often used loosely and awareness is rarely defined or measured. This narrative review synthesises literature on design thinking in education, teachers' experiences of it, and implementation barriers, and relates them to the policy context created by India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The review proposes a five-dimension framework of teacher awareness: familiarity with the term, conceptual understanding, understanding of the iterative process, pedagogical understanding, and policy linkage. The literature indicates that design thinking lacks a settled definition, that teachers who engage with it can come to see their own work as problems of practice to be designed, and that teachers across studies report pedagogical, curricular, structural, and assessment-related barriers, with professional development repeatedly identified as an enabling condition. NEP 2020 provisions on experiential learning, competency-based assessment, multidisciplinary study, and continuing professional development are consistent with design thinking, but whether Indian teachers recognise this overlap has not been systematically established. The review concludes with a research agenda, including validated awareness measures and studies of teacher education, and implications for in-service professional development.