Davis & Krajcik (2005)

Designing Educative Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning

The article Designing Educative Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning was written by Elizabeth Davis and Joseph Krajcik and published in Educational Researcher in 2005. The article is available from Sage Publishers at http://edr.sagepub.com/content/34/3/3.

Abstract

Curriculum materials for Grades K–12 that are intended to promote teacher learning in addition to student learning have come to be called educative curriculum materials. How can K–12 curriculum materials be designed to best promote teacher learning? What might teacher learning with educative curriculum materials look like? The authors present a set of design heuristics for educative curriculum materials to further the principled design of these materials. They build from ideas about teacher learning and organize the heuristics around important parts of a teacher's knowledge base: subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge for topics, and pedagogical content knowledge for disciplinary practices. These heuristics provide a context for a theoretically oriented discussion of how features of educative curriculum materials may promote teacher learning, by serving as cognitive tools that are situated in teachers' practice. The authors explore challenges in the design of educative curriculum materials, such as the tension between providing guidance and choice.

Outline of Headings

• Goals and Structure of the Article
• Teacher Learning and Teacher Knowledge
• The Design of Educative Curriculum Materials: Some High-Level Guidelines
• Design Heuristics for Educative Curriculum Materials
  • Developing the Design Heuristics and the Issue of Generality
  • The Substance of a Design Heuristic
• How Educative Curriculum Materials Promote Teacher Learning: An Example
• Limitations of Educative Curriculum Materials
• Tensions in Designing Educative Curriculum Materials
  • Tensions in Determining an Appropriate Amount of Guidance and Prescription
  • Tensions in Designing for Different Teachers
• Alternative Structures for Delivering Curriculum Materials
• What Next?

Summary

Educative curriculum materials refer to curriculum materials that support teacher learning as well as student learning. Davis and Krajcik credit both Ball & Cohen (1996) and Bruner (1960) for promoting the idea and present in this article suggestions for the design of such materials and how they might be used. Materials that are educative should help teachers make instructional decisions in both the short- and long-term and lead to a general teaching knowledge that can be applied flexibly across contexts. How teachers learn from educative materials involves the interactions between reader, text, and context (Rumelhart, 1994), how the text is structured (Armbruster & Anderson, 1985), persistence in using the materials, teacher knowledge and beliefs, and disposition towards reflective practice (Collopy, 2003; Remillard, 1999; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002). The interaction of these factors is complex (Lloyd, 1999) and shapes how the curriculum is ultimately enacted (Clandinin & Connelly, 1991). While professional development should also support teacher learning (Putnam & Borko, 2000), educative materials are positioned to support teachers' daily decisions in the real-world context of the classroom (Collopy, 2003). If successful, educative materials will not just promote teacher learning, but will ultimately lead to increased student learning.

Research Questions and Issues

Davis and Krajcik ask, "How can K-12 curriculum materials be designed to support teacher learning, and what might teacher learning with educative curriculum materials look like?" The design process should be iterative and reflective, with testing cycles and development cycles grounded in theory. Davis and Krajcik call their set of descriptors design heuristics instead of design principles to reflect the relative lack of empirical evidence research has yielded thus far.

Comparing teacher learning and knowledge to that of students, Davis and Krajcik claim that teachers' sense of agency over the learning, as well as their advanced development as learners, makes the study of teacher learning complex. Following their formal preparation, opportunities for teacher learning can be scattered and incoherent (Wilson & Berne, 1999). In addition to content and pedagogical knowledge, teachers also develop pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) that helps them effectively teach specific content (Shulman, 1986). Teachers need to integrate their knowledge in a coherent curriculum (Davis, 2004; Linn, Eylon, & Davis, 2004) and maintain a flexibility to respond to student ideas in discussions (Ball & Bass, 2000). This knowledge is situated in practice and distributed across artifacts like their curriculum materials (Putnam & Borko, 2000), making it difficult at times for teachers to apply theories of pedagogy and student learning to their practice (see Fenstermacher, 2004). Teacher learning is also both individual and social (Borko, 2004; Cobb, 1994), all of which, say Davis and Krajcik, make promoting teacher learning more complex than promoting student learning. Prior research suggests that focusing on PDK might be most effective (Collopy, 2003; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002), especially where theories of PDK have been developed in discipline-specific ways.

Also

• Mendeley: http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/designing-educative-curriculum-materials-promote-teacher-learning/

APA

Davis, E. A., & Krajcik, J. S. (2005). Designing educative curriculum materials to promote teacher learning. Educational Researcher, 34(3), 3–14. doi:10.3102/0013189X034003003

BibTeX

@article{Davis2005,
author = {Davis, Elizabeth A. and Krajcik, Joseph S.},
doi = {10.3102/0013189X034003003},
journal = {Educational Researcher},
number = {3},
pages = {3--14},
title = {{Designing educative curriculum materials to promote teacher learning}},
url = {http://edr.sagepub.com/content/34/3/3},
volume = {34},
year = {2005}
}