Design and Research and Teaching Oh My!
Design and Story Captured in the words of Graham Greene, novelist and author:“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
The same can be said of the design process, we choose a moment to examine and design for, or expand on to meet our needs. We then look at said moment and look back at what has happened before and look forward at what we can do differently and hopefully better. We are the designers of our own storied, and those stories are still being created. |
Teachers as Designers
As teachers, we are naturally designers. We design classrooms. We design lessons. We design learning opportunities. We design assessments. We design seating plans. We design opportunities for collaboration. We design activities that engage and inspire. We design discussions to spark inquiry, debate or maybe both. We design fun. We design time to reflect and time to discuss. We design moments in time, and the spaces in between. We design curriculum. We design on ahead of time. We design in the moment.
Yet, we often don't view ourselves as designers, even though each day we use empathy to define what our students need. We ideate in the moment to solve problems or to help a student see something in a new way. We implement our ideas, by prototyping and testing, thinking of new ideas and going through the process once again. We are constantly in the iterative process, improving and refining the opportunities we provide our students. We design those experiences that will help shape and define our students. By viewing ourselves as a designers, teachers can embrace that each day is organic, that it can change, and we may fail, but that we can fix it through iteration and reflection and try again in that moment or tomorrow. |
I'm drawn to design, for design is transformative. Design allows us to impact the world. (Crouch and Pearce, 2012) We can transform the way we do things if we think of ourselves as designers. As teacher designers, we need to understand and know that we can design to transform the lives of our students, in multiple ways.Crouch, C., & Pearce, J. (2012). Doing Research in Design. London: Berg
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Teacher Researcher in Me:
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Research in Design:
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"Infinite Onion" - Layers of Research
Through my research into design-based research methodology, I came across a study by Gallagher & Fazio: Multiple layers: Education faculty reflecting on Design-Based Research focused on curricular integration. In the article, they report their findings using a poem by Clarke Faint called "Infinite Onion". The layers are also a lot like how I see research, and quite honestly life going. Researching any topic is about getting to the inner layer of understanding, only to discover that there is more to know. The idea of the "infinite onion" really resonated with me, separate from the article. The fact that we are always peeling back our understanding of our world. It ties so well to the design process and how I view each year with a new class. In the first month, I am slowly peeling back the layers of how the class will function as a whole, while taking time to understand all the individual students. When we get past the 'honeymoon phase' and get to the harder work, the deeper learning, the tough 'stuff'! I am always fascinated by teachers who are surprised that every time we think we have it all figured out; something changes. Those are those unanticipated layers; those are the unexpected good and bad things that happen because that is just part of the human experience: complex and layered.
Where next, it depends on where you want to go . . . but you can go to Where Next! |