reDesignED approaches teaching and learning as a design science. Why?

Because “teaching is a particularly complex profession with multiple goals that need to be addressed at the same time and that involves students who are diverse along many different dimensions” (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017), reDesignED guides teachers through design processes that address current challenges and opportunities within the context of their specific disciplines. This allows teachers to enact multiple challenges together in the final product.

How does it work?

reDesignED designs teacher professional learning opportunities grounded in the latest literature review of a given topic. All reDesignED’s teacher professional learning offering follow key practices for educator preparation which include 1) anchoring the content to be learned in the science of human development and learning, 2) integrating theory and practice, 3) providing opportunity for authentic application, 4) engaging in inquiry, design, and analysis; 5) providing coaching and expert support, 6) offering feedback and opportunities for reflection, 7) collaborating in a professional learning community (Darling-Hammond, Flook, Schachner, & Wojcikiewicz, 2022).

Finally, what makes our approach unique is that we not only offer research-based content and research-based implementation of our professional learning opportunities, we additionally engage in design-based research. This means that our stakeholders: students, teachers, schools, districts, departments of education, etc. benefit from the research we engage in by receiving feedback about the implementation: what worked, in which context, for whom, and why, etc.  As such, our design-based research approach offers exciting opportunities to gather in-depth qualitative and quantitative data to develop rich and useful findings about learning and skill development.

What are the implications for education?

Because reDesignED scaffolds its teacher professional learning opportunities into learning progressions that guide teachers from the knowledge dimension, to the reflection dimension, and into the synthesis dimension, it accommodates varying levels of prior knowledge and district learning needs. Teachers work in teacher design teams to redesign an existing unit of study and apply what they have learned while taking into consideration the design constraints that they are the experts in. This approach not only helps teachers implement what they have learned, it additionally fosters design thinking and shares design processes and tools, so that teachers can continue to apply these processes in future teaching and learning scenarios.

Finally, approaching teaching and learning as a design science bridges the formidable gulf between research and practice by enlisting teachers as critical participants in education design research initiatives. Perhaps most importantly, it fulfills a longstanding promise to improve the conditions for learners directly.