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This chapter unpacks ‘design thinking’ as it relates to educational design, and highlights how developments in the field of Learning Design may be of assistance to educators. Design is defined as a creative, scientific, and complex process, underpinned by several design thinking qualities. Teaching, it is argued, should be positioned as a design science, based on its nature, practice, and intentions. Learning to design is characterized as a challenging pursuit that is supported through practice, refection, examples, and expert guidance. Based on the literature, the pursuit of designing for learning is explained as a process involving the creation of accessible and aligned designs that cater to students in order to achieve desired learning outcomes. Educational design models by Laurillard, Siemens, and Conole are contrasted and evaluated in order to critically reflect on the general utility of such models. The field of Learning Design is introduced as a discipline area that aims to help educators develop and share great teaching ideas. Six approaches that support the description and sharing of learning designs are briefly described (technical standards, pattern descriptions, visualizations, visualization tools, pedagogical planners, and the Learning Activity Management System) so as to illustrate how the Learning Design field has evolved and how educators can capitalize upon it. Directions forward are recommended, which center around reflection, collaboration, and a design orientation.

Different images of teacher knowledge and of teaching are described using the conceptual structure of Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999a), in which knowledge and practice are viewed as either formal, practical, or transformative. Instructional design (ID) represents a formal image of knowledge and frames the teacher as a problem-solver. Teachers, however, have been resistant to the use of ID. In a graduate ID course, students were given the task of drawing their own representation of the ID process. Two research questions framed the study, including How might these models be categorized? and What views of teaching were found in the models? From 13 deliveries of the course, 123 models and explanatory narratives were analyzed from students who were teachers. The course and ID model task are described. A recursive cycle of categorization and theme-building were used. Types of models included those characterized by Human Activity (51 models), Components (23), Artifacts (20), Organic (15), and Flow Charts (14). Views of teaching included Teacher-centered (47 models), Designer-centered (36 models), Co-centered (18), Learner-centered (16), and De-centered (6). Analysis revealed that for teachers ID activity is a human activity and the principal focus for design activity is teacher needs. Implications are summarized in terms of teacher knowledge and expertise, as well as limitations to our methodology.

The design narrative details how the authors systematically and concretely adapted the design of afterschool club for children and pre-service teachers to respond to the increasingly explicit racism in US political discourse that fueled Trump’s election and coinciding forms of evading race.

The purpose of this paper is to present a design narrative focused on tensions around evading race in our after-school program for predominantly Latinx children and White pre-service teachers; how the authors re-mediated the material, ideational and relational resources of the program to address the tension; and the effects of our re-mediation on the adaptation of the program and how this shaped pre-service teachers’ engagement with children’s racialized experiences.

Re-mediating the design of ideational, relational, and material resources in the afterschool club allowed the designers to address how racial ideologies of color evasiveness limited opportunities for trust and mutual learning between the predominantly White preservice teachers and Latinx children.

The paper describes how concerns with equity emerged and were addressed in a program in a particular place and time for particular people. It offers a systematic view into the inner-workings of designing for equity and why people’s lived experiences, history and social practices around engaging with processes of racialization and power matter for the design of learning.

The design narrative suggests practical implications including the need to develop coursework and practicum experiences that support pre-service teachers’ and educators’ study of how power, enacted through racial ideologies of color evasiveness and other forms of epistemic violence, frames and materially impacts our interactions with children from non-dominant groups.

Two social implications from the design narrative include the following: the need to deepen the understandings of the past and present, proud and violent, histories of minoritized communities to organize consequential learning; and the need to recruit more students of color into the programs recognizing that it alone is not adequate for enacting educational justice.

As designers working toward equity, the authors must hold lightly onto their designs, be willing to let go of features that no longer serve the goals and develop new approaches that can help them achieve them. The authors must also attend seriously to the critiques offered by our youth-partners so that they can better support their learning and desires for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how pedagogical mentoring contributed to the transformation of teachers’ pedagogical practices and to the consolidation of a team of autonomous leaders in a Colombian regional university, within the framework of a curricular reform.

The paper is a qualitative research under the methodology of experience systematization. In this methodology, the participants and researchers analyze experiences and generate knowledge about why processes are developed in a particular way. This requires organizing, reconstructing and interpreting facts and experiences. In education, the main actors (teachers) research their own pedagogical practice, developing critical thinking and generating curricular and pedagogical knowledge.

Results show that pedagogical mentoring was effective in achieving the proposed objectives by means of learning conversations. The entire process addressed the curriculum in all its complexity, encouraged reflection about the teachers’ pedagogical practice and empowered them as designers, implementers and evaluators of the curriculum.

Curricular reforms are complex educational phenomena. In this study, the authors limited the analysis to understanding how to generate a new community of practice with teachers to implement curricular changes in all their complexity. Other actors such as principals or students were not included in the process.

The systematization of this experience shows that pedagogical mentoring is a successful strategy to develop a curricular reform in a participative manner. In addition, it provides elements – from both pedagogical practice and theory – to foster communities of reflexive teachers who are ultimately the actual designers and implementers of curricula that can tackle the challenges of education for the twenty-first century.

This chapter reports on an ethnographic case study of how a group of elementary school teachers designed technology enhanced learning with mobile technology (e.g. notebooks, tablet computers and mobile phones) to facilitate students’ development of literacy and twenty-first century competencies. These teachers designed the school’s literacy pedagogical approach, leveraging the use of technology, namely digital storytelling. The school in this case study is one of the eight Future Schools in Singapore under the FutureSchools@Singapore program. The school has been providing one-to-one mobile computing learning devices and wireless Internet access for its students. The introduction of technology in the classroom makes it possible for twenty-first century competencies to be integrated into literacy development. The conversational framework is used as a framework to examine how the design of the digital storytelling pedagogical approach brings about the various teaching–learning activities – acquisition, inquiry, practice, production, discussion and collaboration. The use of digital storytelling as an approach to integrate information communication technology (ICT) into the classroom has not only modified how ICT is being used in the school, it has redefined how ICT could be used to engage young learners. It has fundamentally transformed conventional storytelling with the use of current state-of-the-shelf (i.e. easily and widely available) technologies. This case study also outlines the processes involved in improving the design of digital storytelling over the years by the teachers. The ecosystem of the school is also taken into consideration and described in detail. Findings suggest the importance of the collaborative efforts of the teachers in the continuous improvements made to this design. The adoption of a learning design framework, such as the one used in this study, can be beneficial to ensure a systematic approach to the design of learning. In addition, the availability of technological infrastructure and computing devices are necessary for the seamless use of technology in the classroom. The just-in-time learning approach is adopted for students to learn technology as they are developing their digital stories.

Using Johansson-Sköldberg et al.’s (2013) descriptions of design discourses, this study aims to analyze teacher interviews, research notes and teacher and student artifacts to determine if engagement in design practices led to changes in the teacher’s thinking.

This article presents results from a year-long study that explored how a teacher enacted design discourses to engage in curriculum learning within an elementary school makerspace. The design-based study involved a collaborative partnership where a teacher and researcher co-designed, co-enacted and co-reflected on three cycles of making featuring curriculum studies in science, mathematics and social studies.

The authors determined that engagement in all four design discourses led to transformative changes in the teacher’s thinking about herself as a teacher and her students as learners. The evidence suggests the school makerspace can serve as a liminal design space for professional learning, given that implicit in the makerspace is the embodiment of design practices such as problem finding, iteration and reflection.

Engaging in design discourses in the makerspace can lead teachers to question the frames they hold about teaching and learning. However, teachers need ongoing support in developing discipline knowledge and prioritizing the time required for designing, iterating and reflecting on learning in the makerspace.

The makerspace provides a liminal space for teachers’ professional learning in that implicit in the makerspace is the embodiment of design practices such as problem finding, iteration and reflection.

This study is unique, in that it places the importance of teacher learning in the elementary school makerspace on equal footing with student learning, thereby creating a culture of inquiry for all.

For this purpose, Teacher Self-Regulation Scale (TSRS), Emotions Questionnaire for Teachers (EQT) and Grasha's Teaching Style Inventory (TSI) were employed to gauge the influences of teacher self-regulation on university teachers' emotions and preferred teaching style. The participants of this study were 320 university teachers, majored in different branches of English (English Literature, English Teaching, English Translation), teaching in different universities of Iran. To shed light on the causal associations, a path analysis was run using LISREL 8.80.

Following the pivotal role of effective teaching on educational well-being, the present study delve into three significant teacher-related variables i.e. teacher self-regulation, emotions and teaching style. For this purpose, TSRS, EQT, and Grasha's TSI were employed to gauge the influences of teacher self-regulation on university teachers' emotions and preferred teaching style. The participants of this study were 320 university teachers, majored in different branches of English (English Literature, English Teaching, English Translation), teaching in different universities of Iran. To shed light on the causal associations, a path analysis was run using LISREL 8.80.

Based on the findings, teacher self-regulation predicts pleasant emotions positively; whereas, it predicts unpleasant emotions in a negative direction. The results also demonstrate that teacher self-regulation positively and significantly predicts student-centred styles (Facilitator and Delegator), and the reverse is true for teacher-centred styles (Formal Authority, Personal Model, and Expert).

Future studies may advance the possible relationships among the subscales of teacher self-regulation, teacher emotion and teaching style. Also, further investigations are suggested to target the teacher self-regulation, teacher emotion and teaching style in enhancing language learners' achievement.

In effect, the findings of the current study contribute to the fields of teacher psychology and teacher education. The implications of this study may open another perspective into university teachers’ psychological well-being and professional development.

The implications of this study may redound to the advantage of policy makers, curriculum designers, teacher educators, as well as university teachers.

The implications of this study may redound to the advantage of policy-makers, curriculum designers, teacher educators and university teachers.

This study aims to investigate how primary teachers, when taking part in digital didactic design (D³) workshops at the Digital Laboratory Centre at the university, develop their insights about how digital tools can be designed and further used in their teaching of science. The research question addresses how D³ can be used to develop primary teachers’ knowledge about teaching science with digital technologies.

During two semesters, 14 primary science teachers from three different schools participated in an in-service course at the university. Five D³ workshops lasting 4 h each were conducted with the aim to analyze, design and implement digital tools based on the needs of teachers and students. This includes discussions about the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework and further recommendations about how to choose, design, implement and evaluate digital tools for different teaching and learning situations. In between the workshops, the teachers were told to reflect on their experiences with colleagues and students and share their ideas and reflections to support collegial learning.

The results indicate that D³ has an opportunity to promote deep learning experiences with a framework that encourages teachers and researchers to study, explore and analyze the applied designs-in-practice, where teachers take part in the design process. This study further indicates that having teachers explicitly articulates their reasoning about designing digital applications to engage students’ learning that seems important for exploring the types of knowledge used in these design practices and reflecting on aspects of their teaching with digital technologies likely to influence their TPACK.

This research indicates that the increasing prevalence of information communication technology offers challenges and opportunities to the teaching and learning of science and to the scientific practice teachers might encounter. It offers solutions by investigating how primary teachers can design their own digital technology to meet students’ science learning needs. One limitation might be that the group of 14 teachers cannot be generalized to represent all teachers. However, this study gives implications for how to work with and for teachers to develop their knowledge of digital technologies in teaching.

As this project shows teachers can take an active part in the digital school development and as such become producer of knowledge and ideas and not only become consumers in the jungle of technical applications that are implemented on a school level. Therefore, it might well be argued that in science teaching, paying more careful attention to how teachers and researchers work together in collaborative settings, offers one way of better valuing science teachers’ professional knowledge of practice. As such, an implication is that digital applications are not made “for” teachers but instead “with” and “by” teachers.

The society puts high demands om teachers’ knowledge and competencies to integrate digital technologies into their daily practices. Building on teachers’ own needs and concerns, this project addresses the challenge for teachers as a community to be better prepared for and meet the societal challenge that digitalization means for schools.

Across the field of science education, knowledge about the relation between teachers’ use of digital technology and how it might (or might not) promote students’ learning offers access to ideas of how to design and implement teacher professional development programs. This offers enhanced communication opportunities between schools and universities regarding school facilities and expectations of technology to improve teachers’ experiences with integrating technology into their learning and teaching. This pragmatic approach to research creates theory and interventions that serve school practice but also produces challenges for design-based researchers.

Purpose – The purpose of the study was to understand if / how making e-books can facilitate digital literacy skills among teacher candidates.

Design – The research design was a qualitative case study. Data were collected from the student’s e-book, student’s e-book reflective commentary, and questionnaire as well as course reflection. Multimodality and the technological, pedagogical content knowledge (CK) provided the theoretical framework.

Findings – The findings of this qualitative case study indicate that making e-books do facilitate the acquisition of digital literacy and technological pedagogical content knowledge among teacher candidates. In addition, the project promoted transmediation and differentiation of instruction. It facilitated divergent thinking and knowledge of instructional design as well as the affordances and constraints of multimodal tools.

Practical Implications – This study contributes to the literature on e-books and their role in digital literacy development among teacher candidates. The study supports the need to provide teachers with the opportunity for inquiry-oriented and design-based projects that enable them to be knowledge generators. Teachers should be allowed to experiment with digital and multimodal tools, and in the process, create opportunities for transmediation and differentiation of instruction for their students.

Explores leader‐follower dynamics within a context of a learning organization. Examines the influence of leaders’ behaviours on their followers’ learning in an energy company based in western Canada. Using survey data gathered from 400 full‐time employees the researchers assessed Senge’s proposition in The Fifth Discipline (1990) that leadership behaviour, conceptualized in terms of three roles: steward, designer and teacher, facilitated informal learning. Using a learning questionnaire to measure supportive leadership practices for learning in the workplace, it is argued that the results revealed the presence of all three roles in the case study. Of the three, the “designer” role was the weakest at 57 percent agreement from respondents followed by 63 percent for “steward” and 67 percent for “teacher”. Significant differences in the level of agreement were found within duration of employment and occupational group. The data will encourage organizational leaders to reflect critically upon their activities if they are committed to the strategy of developing their intangible assets: people.