Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: This exploratory, embedded single study examined the experiences of middle grades teacher design teams over 10 months as they were immersed in the development of interdisciplinary curriculum units using a backward design framework. The teachers were supported by a researcher-practitioner partnership and situated in a middle level school structure that valued teachers’ engagement with curriculum design. Most notably, we found that the teachers experienced productive struggle throughout their design process and, as a result, shifted their pedagogical design capacity from adapting or offloading to improvising their curriculum. These findings are particularly significant to middle grades education because of the importance of curricular learning experiences for young adolescents that are challenging, exploratory, integrative, and diverse. Teachers can better create these kinds of experiences for their middle grades students if they are the ones designing those experiences with their particular students in mind.
Source: RMLE Online
Authors: Christine P. Trinter, Hilary E. Hughes
Institutions: University of Notre Dame, University of Georgia
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W3133447346