Educational Designer

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Building on Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies (BlackFMP; Joseph, 2021), we aim to understand how curriculum can center the brilliance of particularly marginalized students—those who are marginalized (i.e., de-centered) by multiple forms of oppression. The BlackFMP framework centers the intersectional experiences of Black girls within the United States’ colorblind school system. Building on theory and prior research, BlackFMP situates Black girls’ individual experiences within a social and historical context. BlackFMP orients us to the brilliance of Black girls in the United States as one case of particularly marginalized students in the global community. Using the BlackFMP framework, we analyzed a lesson from a published middle school mathematics curriculum for how it attends (or not) to multiple dimensions of BlackFMP: academic and social integration, robust mathematics identities, and critical consciousness and reclamation. Our analysis then supported us in offering ways to redesign the lesson to facilitate increasingly equitable mathematical experiences. We argue that using a framework that centers a particularly marginalized population, such as the BlackFMP framework, can create learning opportunities for curriculum designers internationally as they explore ways to create textbooks that have equitable learning opportunities for the populations they support.

Jasien, L., Lolkus, M., Eanes Snowden, M.A., Dietiker, L. (2024). Designing Mathematics Curricula that Center Students’ Brilliance. Educational Designer, 5(17). ISSN 1759-1325
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume5/issue17/article67/

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Teachers hold beliefs that determine the practices they use to offer accessibility for students; usually taking an approach to start from the easy and known content towards the more difficult and unknown. While this kind of support will enable particular students to engage with these kind of tasks, others might still struggle to start or else find such tasks too easy. In addressing the aforementioned issues, task design for inclusion is discussed within an inquiry-oriented curriculum framework. An inquiry framework posits that irrespective of their academic and learning ability, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, all students should have access to and experience a broad mathematics curriculum. Embedded within the principles of representation, action and expression, and engagement of the universal design for learning framework, three task design features are presented. To translate these task design features into practice, an example of a low-floor high-ceiling task is provided. This task, the spiral pattern investigation (see Calleja, 2020), embraces student diversity of ideas and supports an inclusive secondary school mathematics classroom setting. The discussion focuses on how design features can make tasks accessible to students and, hence, how tasks features can allow students to contribute ideas and to engage in higher-order thinking through varied representations of ideas and more complex connections between ideas.

Calleja, J. Features in Task Design for Inclusion: An Example of a Mathematical Investigation. Educational Designer, 5(17). ISSN 1759-1325
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume5/issue17/article68/

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Equity-based practices in mathematics are advanced when educational teachers use formative assessment data and differentiate learners’ experiences based on that data. To this end, educational designers can support teachers through the design of high-quality instructional resources that are aligned to mathematics standards, incorporate research-based pedagogies, and provide all learners with access to these experiences. In this article we apply Gutiérrez’ (2009) framework for equity-based mathematics practices and formative assessment processes as guideposts for promoting equity in elementary school mathematics classrooms. We then describe and critically examine two vignettes of how the design of instructional activities and associated professional learning experiences can support teachers’ use of equity-based practices in their mathematics classrooms. Implications for this work center on the need to embed equity-based practices in the design of instructional resources, the need to provide high quality professional learning opportunities for teachers related to equity-based teaching, and the need to allow teachers to have some autonomy and freedom in how they use instructional resources based on their individual students’ needs.

Polly, D., Martin, C.S. (2024). Considering the Design and Use of Differentiated Activities and Fluency Games to Advance Equity-Based Mathematics Practices. Educational Designer, 5(17). ISSN 1759-1325
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume5/issue17/article69/

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This paper details the process of designing a professional development workshop on inclusive science teaching for university teachers. To deepen participants’ understanding of inclusion in science teaching and to promote reflection and action, we developed a two-session workshop that was context-specific, used conceptual vocabulary purposefully, and encouraged teachers to take action in their own context. We share the practical and theoretical considerations of designing a workshop that was rooted in our specific context, our varied pedagogical approach, and reflections

Rowan, E., Bilinski, A., de Boer, M., Bouhamou, C., Khan, S.N., Nieves Delgado, A., Bakker, A. (2024). Inclusive Science Teaching: Designing a Workshop for University Teachers. Educational Designer, 5(17). ISSN 1759-1325
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume5/issue17/article70/

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A U.S. based, national university access and persistence organization wanted to better meet the holistic needs of first generation, university-going students of color from low-income communities. They chose culturally relevant pedagogy as their framework to redesign the curriculum in an effort to meet the needs of their students and achieve better access and persistence outcomes. On the surface, a national, standardized curriculum is the opposite of culturally relevant. This produced an interesting case of a general design challenge: how do designers create a single curriculum that is culturally relevant and will be implemented across metropolitan regions that vary widely in local culture? What emerged was both an inclusive design process, and the creation of a series of tools and resources to support the implementation of a curriculum that was adaptable to local context while maintaining core content that all students needed. This paper will share the principles that provided the foundation for equity-centered collaboration and design experiences, a framework for designing a culturally relevant curriculum (or other educational materials) to be used across varying cultural contexts, and a process for implementing an equity-centered design process at scale. This toolkit can be utilized by curriculum designers, teachers, and organizational leaders to center equity and inclusion in their design processes and within their content and programming.

Menzies, C.M., Schunn, C.D. (2024). Designing for Equity at Scale. Educational Designer, 5(17). ISSN 1759-1325
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume5/issue17/article71/

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This design autoethnography explores the intersection of social justice and education through the lens of caring design, as enacted by a teacher working with undocumented students. This autoethnography analyzes the re/design of an argumentative writing unit – not only does it address the linguistic and socioemotional needs of recently-arrived multilingual learners, it also integrates a critical examination of laws that affect them. Consideration is given to design questions (design for compliance vs. curiosity), design processes (dogfooding, focal students), and design principles (relevant ethical issues, pluralistic questions, multi-modality), all within the larger lens of caring design. The autoethnographic study contributes to this special issue by illustrating how critical and caring pedagogies can be effectively merged to challenge and transform the existing educational paradigms, promoting a more equitable learning experience for marginalized students.

Chen, N. (2024). When is it Right to Break the Law? Redesigning Argumentative Writing for Multilingual Learners. Educational Designer, 5(17). ISSN 1759-1325
Retrieved from: http://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume5/issue17/article72/