Designing for Learning

Designing for learning involves all the aspects of design and design thinking, but with a point of departure as well.  Teachers are not designers of artifacts; rather, they engage in design thinking to create designs for learning.  Teachers as designers involves:

1. Finding the Right Problem
   1. Here is where teachers generate ideas (engage in ideation) of topics for investigation that are fully alive in the world and fulfill their students’ needs.
   2. Collaborate with colleagues and students about the topic ideas.
   3. Get feedback from students and colleagues as they engage in the process of generating idea topics.
   4. Decide on a topic area
   5. Identify the understanding that all students must achieve through engaging in this topic.

2. Mapping the appropriate subject/s and subject outcomes from the relevant mandated program/s of study onto the study.

3. Identifying learning intentions. What does the teacher intend that students will learn?

4. Day-to-Day Pedagogy
   1. Plan the initial task or activity that invites the students into the study
   2. Get feedback from the students in the form of formative assessment to:
      1. gather evidence on what students have learned,
      2. guide pedagogy and instruction [adjust as needed based on the evidence], and
      3. guide the design of next activity.

5. Iterate
   1. Plan next activity based on evidence of student learning and levels of engagement arising from the prototype (invitation activity for students)
   2. Get feedback from the students in the form of formative assessment to:
      1. gather evidence on what students have learned,
      2. guide pedagogy and instruction [adjust as needed based on the evidence], and
      3. guide the design of next activity.

6. Repeat step 5

In the following video Dr. Clark discusses what occurs when teachers misunderstand design as another form of implementation.  Implementation implies a top-down approach.  Implementation is well understood by most teachers, as it is the approach that teachers have been required to undertake under conventional approaches to teaching and learning.  In this video, two teachers talk about the process of design they undertook in a study into creosote contamination in their local community.