Issue 2 - May 2009

Welcome to Educational Designer #2

Welcome to the second issue of Educational Designer - a free journal established by the International Society for Design and Development in Education with the goal of improving the design and systematic development of educational materials.

This issue follows the pattern of the first: a piece on a strategic issue in design, an analytic account of a specific design, and a distinguished designer’s personal account of his approach to design and methods of working. They break new ground in at least two respects, describing the design of support for a professional development program, and of software applets.

Bridging the Cultures of Educational Research and Design

Alan H. Schoenfeld
Elizabeth and Edward Conner Professor of Education
University of California, Berkeley

There is some but relatively little overlap between the cultures of educational research and educational design, a state of affairs that is to the detriment of both fields. In this article I address some of the reasons this is the case, and then make a plausibility argument for a more substantial rapprochement between the two fields. I do so first by analogy, suggesting that research on the “professional vision” of designers would be of profit to practitioners in both fields. I then provide a preliminary example of what such work might reveal, and propose the systematic pursuit of such ideas.

Schoenfeld, AH. (2009) Bridging the Cultures of Educational Research and Design. Educational Designer, 1(2).
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume1/issue2/article5

Designing Professional Development
for Assessment

David C. Webb
University of Colorado at Boulder

Teachers rarely have opportunities to engage in assessment design even though classroom assessment is fundamental to effective teaching. This article describes a process of design, implementation, reflection and redesign that was used to create a model for professional development to improve teachers’ assessment practices. The improvement of the professional development model occurred over a period of eight years, in two different research projects involving middle grades mathematics teachers in the United States. This article also describes the design principles that teachers used to design classroom assessments and “learning lines” to support formative assessment of student understanding.

Webb, D.C. (2009) Designing Professional Development for Assessment. Educational Designer, 1(2).
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume1/issue2/article6

A Designer Speaks: Peter Boon

Freudenthal Institute for Science and Mathematics Education
University of Utrecht
The Netherlands

This paper describes the design process of a collection of educational Java applets for fostering spatial abilities in primary and secondary education.
It describes the process in which I tried to exploit the unique possibilities of software in realizing learning activities with a clear add-on value in reaching the learning objectives.

I will not only use the viewpoint of an educational designer who is inspired by the possibilities of software, but also that of a software designer and programmer who is inspired by educational needs and ideas to modify existing software features or create new ones.

Boon, P. (2009) A Designer Speaks. Educational Designer, 1(2).
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume1/issue2/article7

ISSN 1759-1325