Speakers
Adam HandelszaltsCollaborative
curriculum development in Teacher Design Teams – Completing the puzzle
Collaborative curriculum development by teachers is often presented as an important component in a strategy for sustainable educational innovation in schools. The claim is that active participation of teachers in the (re)design of the curriculum will lead to context specific solutions that are supported by the educational staff. Additionally, this process encourages knowledge sharing and development thus leading to professional development of the teachers involved. Finally, by working together on the development task the development of a collaborative culture in the school is supported. Several studies show that this kind of collaborative curriculum development requires a certain set of structures, conditions and support. In this presentation I will map out the different components of and conditions for collaborative curriculum design and explore the empirical evidence we have on the different pieces of this complicated puzzle. About Adam Handelzalts: Adam Handelzalts is an assistant professor at ELAN – Teacher education at the University of Twente. His research focuses on teacher collaboration for educational innovation and improvement in different contexts. One central theme in his work is Teacher Design Teams. These teacher teams engage in collaborative curriculum design of their own school courses. After defining a design goal these teams collaborate in designing curriculum materials that they also implement collaboratively. Additionally, he studies Data teams – these teacher teams collaboratively use data to solve educational problems within the school. They initially use data to identify the causes of the problem and based on that implement and evaluate a solution. Common to both forms of teacher collaboration is the dual goal of concrete educational change and the professional development of teachers. [email protected] |
Alain Brueleux
Participatory design research and Professional Learning Networks for digital literacy and disciplinary understanding in school.
This presentation discusses participatory design research as an innovative research approach characterized by a more structured inclusion of participants into the design research process. The iterative socio-cultural processes will be illustrated by three interrelated on-going initiatives involving ICT-supported learning as a practice shift for teachers, and mutual close collaboration between teachers, administrators, and a support team including University-based researchers and techno-pedagogical consultants. Fundamental conceptual underpinnings of our projects include, in addition to a collaborative design-based enterprise, a focus on professional development, and fostering a culture of inquiry and knowledge sharing. About Alain Breuleux:Alain Breuleux is a cognitive psychologist collaborating with school teachers and administrators to design and investigate sustainable technology-enabled networks for learning and advanced pedagogical practices. In recent years, he has lead collaborative research to understand how children and educators in small remote schools in the Province of Quebec can best use Internet and multimedia tools to construct and share knowledge (L’École Éloignée en Réseau and Building Community through TeleCollaboration). The research in these design experiments looks at attitudes, motivation, interaction, and learning. [email protected] |
William R. PenuelImproving Implementation of Innovative
Teaching Practices:From Fidelity to Principled Adaptation of Curricula
Coherent curriculum materials have the potential to be a powerful tool for improving teaching and learning at scale. Yet teachers do not always have a say in their development, and policy makers and professional curriculum developers often worry that teachers’ implementation undercuts the curricular intentions of others’. In this presentation, I offer a vision of teachers as designers who benefit from access to existing high-quality curriculum materials, opportunities to engage with others in revising them, and participation in design activities alongside education researchers, assessment developers, and subject matter experts. I will present examples of initiatives that prepared teachers to make principled adaptations of curriculum materials and that engaged teachers successfully as co-designers. Evidence from these initiatives suggests that supporting teachers’ design activities in structured ways can enhance curriculum implementation, improve teaching, and increase student learning. About William Penuel: William Penuel is professor in educational psychology and the learning sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on teacher learning and organizational processes that shape the implementation of educational policies, school curricula, and afterschool programs. He examines learning from sociocultural, social capital, and complex social systems perspectives. He focuses on designs for teacher professional development in Earth science education and on the role of research-practice partnerships in designing supports for teacher learning in school districts. [email protected] |
Nienke NieveenTeacher design teams and the need for curriculum design expertise.
Teachers play a significant role in curriculum reform initiatives. Obviously they are key in the actual enactment of the renewal in their classes. Moreover, in many instances they are taking part in the process of school-based curriculum development, for reasons of enhancing the fit of the renewal to local contexts and promoting teachers’ ownership. In many Dutch schools groups of teachers of related subjects cooperate in order to renew and redesign their common curriculum. These teacher design teams (TDTs; in Dutch DOTs – docentontwikkelteams) not only (re)design but also commonly implement the new curriculum in their own classes. So far, the phrase 'teachers as designers' has been used in a rather indefinite way. In practice, teachers carry out a variety of curriculum-related design tasks in their schools and these duties ask for a variety of design expertise. In this contribution, I will offer an analysis framework that has been used to reveal the variety in design tasks that teachers typicaly perform throughout their teaching careers. The framework was designed and validated using a cyclical approach. Once design tasks have been characterized, one can become more precize in the kind of design expertise that teacher design teams need to bring to the 'design table'. Moreover, the framework has been used in pre- and inservice teacher education institutes in order to discuss the question how to anticipate the need for design expertise of teachers. About Nienke Nieveen: Nienke Nieveen is senior researcher at SLO (Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development). Her work centers on coordinating the Institute's evaluation activities and the thematic strand 'Curriculum and teachers'. She has been engaged in many projects related to school-based curriculum development and professional development of teachers in the field of curriculum development. Her dissertation, in 1997, was based on a four-year design research project in the field of curriculum design and evaluation. From 1997 to 2007 she was appointed as assistant professor at the University of Twente, specializing in curriculum design research and school-based curriculum development. The following books over the last decade (edited with some colleagues) represent her orientations: Design approaches and tools in education and training (1999), Educational design research (2006), Introduction to educational design research (2009 and 2013) and Schools as curriculum agencies: Asian and European perspectives on school-based curriculum development (2010). [email protected] |
Jan van den AkkerConclusions and ways forward
In this presentation Jan van den Akker will reflect on the speakers' talks and workshops. About Jan van den Akker: Jan van den Akker is Director General of SLO (Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development). Besides, for many years, he was affiliated with the University of Twente as Professor in the domain of Curriculum Design and Implementation. His main areas of expertise are:
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