How do we design a school for the future? This recent article seeks to capture (in the form of a case study) our recent experience in designing such a school. The design process was a collaborative process involving a partnership with a local school district and the design initiatives team at the Teachers College. More about that here and here. Abstract and citation below.
Abstract
This case study, framed within a school–university partnership, highlights the tensions inherent to employing design-based approaches for educational change. The case illustrates core tensions between an abductive, open-ended, design-based approach to change versus more traditional (deductive/inductive) approaches to managing change in schools. The design process serves as a way to break away from the traditional “grammar of schooling” (Tyack & Tobin) in a system unaccustomed to radical change. The case highlights the challenges of maintaining fidelity to the design process within a range of logistical and resources constraints, such as the time available to participants to engage in the process, and the difficulty of rapidly prototyping a new school model within an existing educational ecosystem. In the teaching notes, we recommend a theoretical lens and set of questions for educational leaders to reflect on as they consider approaches to educational change in their own settings.
Wyatt, L., Scragg, B. S., Stein, J. Y. G., & Mishra, P. (2020). Educational change by design: Creating a school of the future.Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555458920979838
What is the relationship between technology and creativity, particularly in educational contexts? In this article, we provide a critical thematic literature review of existing scholarship at the intersection of creativity, technology, and teaching/learning in classroom contexts. We identify the contours of existing research in these areas and note their alignments and gaps to point to future research needs. Abstract and citation (and link to publication) given below:
Abstract
Internationally, creativity is a widely discussed construct that is pivotal to educational practice and curriculum. It is often situated alongside technology as a key component of education futures. Despite the enthusiasm for integrating creativity with technologies in classrooms, there is a lack of common ground within and between disciplines and research about how creativity relates to technology in teaching and learning—especially in the uncertain space of classroom implementation. This article provides a critical thematic review of international literature on creativity and technology in the context of educational practice. We identify four essential domains that emerge from the literature and represent these in a conceptual model, based around: (1) Learning in regard to creativity, (2) Meanings of creativity, (3) Discourses that surround creativity, and (4) the Futures or impacts on creativity and education. Each of these clusters is contextualized in regard to emerging technologies and the developing scope of twenty-first century skills in classroom implementation. We offer conclusions and implications for research and practice.
REMOTE K12: The Connected Teacher Summit, was a one-day virtual summit hosted by ASU, designed for K-12 teachers and those that support and enable teachers in district public, charter and private schools. I presented a talk titled: Technology in teaching & learning: The TPACK framework & more. Video embedded below.
I was recently invited (along with Sean Leahy and Jodie Donner) to present at the Winter Games, Digital Immersive Experience organized by ShapingEDU at Arizona State University. Our talk was titled Learning Futures: Designing the Horizon. We described our session as follows:
The maxim we cannot predict the future, but we can invent it (and its derivatives) is often cited as a call to engage in design and strategic forecasting tools and methodologies. Join us as we create a space to explore what we describe as Learning Futures. Visualize with us how we might rethink our teaching and learning environments by harnessing the opportunities of our collective uncertainty. We will explore emergent strategic foresight frameworks as we consider multiple future scenarios to reveal the risks and opportunities of disruptions, and propose strategies for engaging in futures thinking in your own organizational contexts.
One of the pleasures of academia is working with awesome graduate students. This paper is an example of such a collaboration. Melissa Warr, for some reason or the other, decided to do a network analysis of some of the top-cited papers related to teaching and design. Over the past couple of years this work that she initiated has morphed and mutated through rounds of discussion, analysis, writing and (re-writing). I am thrilled to announce that that work is finally out in the world. For reasons I should not get into here it took a while even after we thought we were done. Aah… the pleasures of academic publishing :-)
This is a publication that I am quite proud of and will be quite influential to the field—seeking as it does to combine two different areas of scholarly literature: teacher education and design. A huge (HUGE) chunk of the credit goes to Melissa and I am glad to have been part of this journey.
The key question this paper seeks to answer is the following:
What does it mean for a teacher to be described as a designer, or for the act of teaching to be considered an act of design?
You can read the abstract and complete article from the link below but I would like to share some of the key findings of analysis of a decade of work in this area.
A key part of the work was identifying some key journal articles in the field and then analyzing their citation patterns to identify emergent clusters or strands of work. 10 such emergent clusters were identified. The first two images below represent the network analysis, showing clusters/strands and the patterns of citation. The table after that provides a list of the 10 “teachers as designers” strands that emerged.
One of the important findings was that the roles teachers play as designers varies across time. The table below gives a mapping of the 10 strands to different times or stages of teachers work (or development).
There is a lot more in the article. Citation, link and abstract given below:
Abstract: This article presents a content and network analysis of a decade (2007 – 2017) of highly-cited literature on teachers and design. Constructs and definitions were compared in an interpretive content analysis, resulting in 10 strands, each a cluster of literature that frames teaching and design in a particular way. A citation network analysis provided insight into how the strands are conceptually related. Further analysis highlighted how each strand described what, when, and how teachers design, and the value of considering teachers as designers. The results suggest that teaching not only includes design activities, but could be considered a design profession. This perspective has implications for teacher education, specifically the development of professional knowledge.
Melissa Warr and I were recently asked to write a afterword to a special issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior. The focus of the special issue was on the kinds of knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) teachers need to successfully integrate technology in their teaching. In our piece, we argued for a expanding the kinds of knowledge teachers have to include broader systemic and cultural knowledge. Our argument is framed within The 5 spaces for design in education framework. This framework provides a tool to think with—emphasizing a systems perspective on what teachers design. Consider, for instance:
… a teacher seeking to try out a new technology to teach and assess scientific understanding. This lesson (and assessment) do not exist in isolation, merely shaped by the teacher’s TPACK. They exist within broader systemic and cultural contexts and discourses, which may include (but surely are not limited to) teacher performance evaluation systems, school rankings, current budgetary constraints, state-level policies and standards, and more. A teacher who understands how these systemic factors work can utilize them intelligently to set herself and her students for success. We do not mean that teachers need to become expert administrators or policy makers. Rather, if teachers are cognizant of these issues, sensitive to constraints, and open to possibilities, they can leverage apparent constraints into recipes for success.
More detail on the 5 spaces is given in the table below.
The five spaces framework allows us to also understand processes, systems and culture that may work against the best intentions of educators. It helps us recognize that sometimes the barriers may be outside of the classroom context, and successfully navigating these barriers may require knowledge of systems and culture that are often not discussed in teacher education or professional development programs. An under- standing of the broader systems and culture within which classrooms operate would allow teachers to acquire aspects of KSA that help them integrate technology in ways that are truly valuable for learners.
What if education systems were doing more and thinking differently about preparing learners to thrive in the future?
The Learning Futures Podcast (from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College) is a series of conversations on improving education and the future of learning. Hosted by Ron Beghetto, each episode presents researchers, education leaders and other guests who share how they’re thinking about and addressing the most pressing challenges in education.
I was a recent guest on the show and you can listen to that episode below. The podcast is available on most platforms and you can find out more about it here.
EduSummIT is a global community of policy-makers, researchers, and educators working together to move education into the digital age.
The last EduSummit (2019) was held in Quebec, Canada and I was a member of Thematic Working Group 3 (TWG3) on Creativity for Teachers and Teaching led by Michael Henderson and Danah Henriksen. The work we did at the meeting has led to an article around creativity, risk-taking, education in global contexts.
In the article we review the literature on creativity, risk-taking and failure. We then describe our narrative inquiry-based research approach and present the six international vignettes where creative risk and failure were instantiated. The case study I shared was the story of the work we did with the Miami Globe school district. I had written about that work previously here and here.
Citation and link to the article below. Enjoy.
Henriksen, D., Henderson, M. Creely, E., Carvalho, Ana A., Cernochova, M., Dash, D., Davis, T., & Mishra, P. (2020). Creativity and risk-taking in teaching and learning settings: Insights from six international narratives. International Journal of Educational ResearchOpen. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100024
2020 has been a heck of a year… and maybe in hindsight (hindsight, of course, being 2020) it will all make sense. But, I think we can all agree that it is time to let it go.
A lot has changed this past year but one tradition we wanted to keep alive was the short videos we create to welcome the new year—a family tradition since 2008. Our videos are usually typographical in nature with some kind of an AHA! moment built in. This year’s video is somewhat different in that it is entirely created on the computer. This is something we have resisted doing since a large part of the fun has been designing the props and the process of shooting/editing to create the final video. However, as my friend Neelakshi pointed out, in some ways it is fitting that this year’s video should be entirely created on a computer since that’s where we did everything!
Check out the latest video, saying goodbye to 2020 and welcoming 2021. May this year be one of joy and peace for all.
The video hinges on writing the word “zero” in such a way that it reads “one” when rotated by 180 degrees.
Such designs (that let you read words in more than one way) are called ambigrams. You can learn more about ambigrams (and the underlying mathematical ideas behind these designs) here or by watching the video below.
Over the past couple of months I have been asked to give presentations at a variety of different conferences or organizations spread across the world. They are archived below.
The Public Interest Technology University Network is a partnership that fosters collaboration between universities and colleges committed to building the nascent field of public interest technology and growing a new generation of civic-minded technologists. Ariel Anbar and I were invited to be part of a panel on embedding humanistic values in STEM education, specifically focused on our recently concluded STEM-Futures project. You can read my blog post about the project, a description on the MLFTC website or visit the project pages at STEM-futures.org.
Presentation at the 18th Shanghai International Curriculum Forum, organized by the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction of ECNU. This talk (titled: TPACK and beyond: Designing Technology & Education (From Artifacts to Culture) was viewed by more than 18,000 participants including experts and scholars, principals in charge of education administrative departments across China.
