Paper presentations and design workshop schedule

Wednesday, 10am - 11am

Room: D102, Paper presentations

Lee Bishop, Ari Krakowski

Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley

Collaborative Design in Informal Learning Spaces: Insights from Community Partnerships

This presentation explores strategies developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science for fostering meaningful design collaborations with diverse community partners. Example projects will highlight practical tools for fostering partner involvement and will illustrate how centering community voices can enhance the impact of educational experiences.A common constraint in design partnerships is that few partners have the capacity or interest for sustained involvement throughout the entire process. We have found that engaging partners at key moments and with appropriately scoped contributions is essential. To involve a diversity of partners, we have developed artifacts and activities that help ensure aligned understanding across contexts and invite open critique and iteration.
Project 1: Vaccine Learning Hub. Early conversations with a community partner during the COVID pandemic led to the co-creation of mental health resources, responding to immediate community needs. When funding shifted to focus on vaccines, we collaborated on an event that addressed both priorities and empowered youth as facilitators.
Project 2: Future of Food Exhibition. Over 150 community partners shaped this 5,000-square-foot exhibition. Workshops helped partners articulate values, influencing early design decisions. Later, low-fidelity prototypes invited feedback, fostering collaborative refinement. Community-identified individuals are featured as Food Heros in the exhibition.
Project 3: Future of Plastics. With a modest budget and funding tied to scientific research, early workshops encouraged scientists to reflect on their values and public perceptions. This built empathy and ensured audience-centered design. Scientists contributed to hands-on activities and appeared in videos to connect the public with their research.
Project 4: Exploring Biotechnology. Designed for 6th-grade students and teachers, this program incorporated early input from both groups. Student-validated contexts were directly reflected in the final program, ensuring relevance and authenticity.
These examples demonstrate how collaborative design builds reciprocal partnerships, amplifies community voices, and creates resonant educational experiences. This presentation will share insights on navigating challenges, building trust, and embedding community input into all design phases. Attendees will gain strategies to foster inclusive partnerships, promoting equitable and responsive learning environments.

Crystal M. Menzies

The Lawrence Hall of Science - UC Berkeley

Intergenerational Pathways: Designing Community-Connected Learning Experiences

This presentation explores the design process and principles behind a multidisciplinary curriculum toolkit that uses themes from Maroon communities—self-liberated enslaved people who established independent societies throughout the Americas—as a foundation for multigenerational, out-of-school learning. The curriculum integrates STEM with humanities, arts, and cultural studies to create rich, interconnected learning experiences through themes of resistance, self-determination, communication, and community-building.
The design process centered on three core questions: How can we create multigenerational learning experiences that authentically represent Maroon communities' cultural wealth while making meaningful connections to contemporary lives and identities? What design elements and scaffolding support diverse kinship networks in engaging with complex historical content through accessible, joyful learning outside traditional educational settings? How might curriculum foster not just historical understanding, but deeper intergenerational dialogue, local community connection, and positive identity development?
Developed through collaboration with educators, parents, and Maroon community members from Jamaica, Colombia, and Brazil, the toolkit features eight thematic explorations structured in three layers: self-reflection, family connection, and community engagement. Activities include scientific investigations through herb cultivation and documentation, technological exploration of communication systems, creating vision boards, storytelling with painted stones, designing murals, and creating personal flags—each connecting historical themes to present-day meaning-making.
The design incorporates age adaptations for children 7-12+, structured reflection prompts, flexible implementation timelines, visual navigation cues, and integrated digital resources. Scientific processes like observation, measurement, and hypothesis testing are embedded throughout, alongside technological literacy skills. Iterative testing with intergenerational family groups revealed how this multidisciplinary approach created entry points for dialogue about identity, values, and community across generations.
This presentation will analyze key design decisions that support thematic exploration rather than linear historical learning, discuss challenges in designing for out-of-school family contexts, and share insights from the collaborative creation process. Participants will gain understanding of how historically-grounded, STEM-integrated curriculum can foster meaningful learning experiences that extend beyond traditional educational boundaries.

John P Egan

University of Auckland

elearning, education, interactivity, engagement

Despite having supported academic development, learning design, pedagogical praxis, and elearning for over two decades, the pace of change post-COVID19 has been unprecedented. The ubiquitous “pivot” to remote teaching—too often conflated with online learning—has transformed learning design praxis, in positive and negative ways. Having designed and delivered wholly online courses since the late 1990s, I was able to draw upon a diverse range of experiences for my own teaching pivot.Since the crisis era of the pandemic passed, much of my most recent work has been to help colleagues learn good and best elearning practices,and unlearn just-in-time content migrations that created massive cognitive overload for learners. In short, many who thought they had “flipped” their courses had, more accurately, “buried” their students, usually with a plethora of protracted multimedia or a surfeit of readings, in the absence of ostensive “contact time” (Anderson, 2008). In this paper I reflect on fifteen years of online learning design and andragogy (Knowles, 1980) in programmes delivered by universities in New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and South Africa. Whether related to a multi-university global programme in adult learning, Canada’s first wholly online programme in educational technology, or a New Zealand suite of online clinical education offerings, these postgraduate initiatives are reflective of the times and contexts in which they have been developed, designed and delivered. And yet, when reflecting on my contributions to each, it is clear that certain commonalities are found in terms of learning design. These include: a focus on early, diagnostic assessment; asynchronous learning activities that require engagement on a weekly basis that provide opportunities for multiplicities of interaction; 2-3 thematic readings that are germane throughout each course/module/paper with one subject-specific weekly reading; early, structured collaborative (or team-based) learning, with learners encouraged to continue using collaborative learning (including formative peer review of assessments prior to submission); and, portfolio-based assessment that integrates reflective practice (Schön, 1983) as an early assessment, into each subsequent assessment point, with a final summary/synthesis assessment where learners review their portfolio of work. Finally I offer examples of how these disparate design elements are used across these programmes, and how they can be calibrated to different contexts and disciplines, while ensuring teaching quality (Biggs and Tang, 2007). Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a Theory of Online Learning in (T. Anderson, Ed.) The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, (pp. 45- 74), Edmonton: Athabasca University PressBiggs, J. & Tang, C. (2007). Teaching for quality learning at university. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill, Society for Research Into Higher Education and Open University Press. Knowles, M. S. (1980). The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy. Chicago:Follett Pub. Co.Schön, D.A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Room: D201, Symposium

Daithí Ó Murchú.

Drumcondra Education Support Centre

AI Singularity - New Frontiers in 21st Century Education Design

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Singularity represents a pivotal epoch in the evolution of educational methodologies and paradigms. As we approach this juncture, where AI's cognitive capabilities are poised to surpass human intelligence, the symposium aims to explore transformative strategies in education that align with, and effectively leverage, this unprecedented technological advancement.
This symposium will delve into three core areas: the theoretical implications of AI Singularity for educational philosophy, practical approaches to integrating advanced AI technologies in learning environments, and the ethical considerations that arise from such integrations. The session will bring together interested parties to dissect the potential shifts in educational landscapes and how these can be directed to foster holistic and inclusive educational experiences.
Firstly, the discussion will open with an exploration of how AI Singularity challenges our traditional views on knowledge transfer and acquisition. It will examine the potential of AI to customise learning experiences at an individual level, thereby addressing diverse learning needs and styles. This segment will critically analyse how AI can be used to enhance critical thinking and creativity among students, preparing them for a world where cognitive augmentation through AI will be commonplace.
Secondly, practical applications of AI in education will be showcased, including case studies from schools that have integrated AI tools to assist with personalised learning paths, real-time feedback mechanisms, and the management of educational resources. This section will also cover the development of new curricula that incorporate AI multi-literacies, ensuring that students are not only users of AI but also understand its workings and implications.
Lastly, the symposium will address the ethical dimensions of AI in education. Key considerations will include data privacy, the risk of bias in AI algorithms, and the broader societal implications of a digitally divided educational system. Participants will engage in a dialogue about strategies to mitigate these risks, promoting an ethical framework for AI use that upholds equity and fairness.
In conclusion, this symposium will not only outline the emerging frontiers in educational design prompted by AI Singularity but also foster a critical discourse on shaping a future where education systems maximize the benefits of AI while navigating its challenges with foresight and responsibility. By reimagining education in the age of AI Singularity, we can sculpt an educational paradigm that is adaptive, equitable, and continuously evolving.

Room: D202, Design Workshop

Brenda Robles; Shamira Underwood

Institute for Learning

Designing for Belonging: Cultivating Joy and Liberatory Learning Spaces

What would it look like if coaching conversations were spaces where both teachers and students could thrive? In this 30-minute session, we’ll dig into a real dilemma from the field of instructional coaching and invite participants—as fellow designers of learning experiences—to think alongside us.
We’ll explore how coach-to-teacher relationships can center belonging, cultural responsiveness, and joy—and how those relationships can ripple into the classroom, shaping the way students experience math. Grounded in the principles of liberatory design, this session offers space to pause, reflect, and imagine new ways of working that move us beyond compliance and toward care, connection, and creativity.
Participants will engage as thinking partners, helping make sense of a challenge that many coaches face: how to support teachers in creating affirming, identity-centered spaces for students while navigating the pressures of pacing, testing, and school systems. Together, we’ll reflect on how small shifts in coaching conversations can lead to meaningful change in student learning.
This session is for anyone who supports teachers—coaches, mentors, and leaders—who wants to build more humanizing and joyful coaching practices.

Room: D301, Paper presentations

Michael Lolkus, Lara Jasien, Marlena Eanes-Snowden, Leslie Dietiker

CPM Educational Program, CPM Educational Program, Vanderbilt University, Boston University

Designing Curricula to Support Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies

This 20-minute research presentation will share findings from our equity audit of CPM Educational Program’s Inspiring Connections, a curriculum that aligns with research on ambitious mathematics instruction and also incorporates findings from recent research on how to support multilingual students who may not yet be proficient in the dominant classroom language, how to support socioemotional dimensions of mathematics learning, and it also incorporates lessons focused on complex contemporary social and scientific issues such as generational wealth and global warming. We published an analytic tool developed from this curriculum equity audit in the 2024 Educational Designer Special Issue on Design for Justice and Belonging. In this session, we will share new findings from our expanded analysis of 95 lessons. The equity audit was built on Dr. Nicole Joseph’s Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies, which incorporate the lens of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), Black Feminism, Black Feminist Thought, and decades of work in mathematics education. It has four broad dimensions: ambitious mathematics instruction, academic and social integration, robust mathematics identities, and critical consciousness and reclamation. We were surprised by the distribution of these dimensions of the framework within the curriculum, and the findings elicit new questions about how and when instruction should attend to each dimension. We coded the course introduction and first chapter of each of the three middle school courses to gain insight to how various mixed-spaced topics and practices were introduced in the course (65 lessons), five lessons randomly selected from each course to gain insight to how the courses attended to Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies over time (30 lessons), and five purposefully selected lessons from each course based on teacher- and district feedback about topics that challenged status quo mathematics teaching and learning (30 lessons). We coded 1,298 instances of ambitious mathematics instruction, 300 instances of academic and social integration, 581 instances of robust mathematics identities, and 128 instances of critical consciousness and reclamation. Our presentation will foreground robust examples already present within our focal curriculum, as well as promising paths forward with particular attention to the least prominent dimension: critical consciousness and reclamation. The benefits and challenges of this work in the United State’s current political climate will be presented as implications, and the relevance of the findings for an international context with diverse student populations will be foregrounded throughout the presentation as it was in the Educational Designer article published in the special issue.

Tina Sugunthi Selvarajah, Bernt Rønning, Hilde Ervik

Norwegian University of Science and Technology - NTNU

Place-based instructional design for sustainability education in teacher education

Sustainability education (SE) pedagogy demands a shift from traditional teaching approaches to more experiential and action based for achieving transformative action among learners. Despite the growing emphasis on sustainability education, research suggests that many teachers remain uncertain about their roles in fostering sustainable development. This uncertainty extends to the pedagogical processes necessary for sustainability education and the specific competencies they should cultivate in their students. Recent advancements in the field highlight the importance of innovative instructional designs that emphasize interactive, experiential, and real-world learning. These approaches not only enhance conceptual understanding but also support the development sustainability competencies which are practical skills and the ability to engage with complex, real-life sustainability challenges.
In response to these challenges, this paper investigates how place-based learning can offer meaningful learning opportunities for pre-service teachers. Specifically, it examines how informal learning environments can foster a deeper understanding of sustainability as a concept and the broader aims of sustainability education. This research is part of an ongoing PhD project focused on exploring innovative instructional strategies in sustainability education in higher education. The primary objective is to design, implement, and evaluate a place-based learning program that promotes the development of pre-service teachers’ competencies and dispositions toward sustainability.
This paper details the process of designing a place-based learning program in introducing sustainability education to pre-service teachers. Design-based research is used to the develop the instructional design. Of the three iterative cycles, 2 have been completed, and the last cycle is scheduled in April 2025. The program takes form in an informal learning environment for 5 days and is built around marine plastic pollution - a pressing socio-scientific issue. In addition, citizen science is integrated into the design to foster knowledge acquisition and practical engagement with real-world problems. The study is conducted in Trondheim, Norway, with pre-service teachers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Preliminary findings from qualitative data analysis indicate that participation in the program enhances pre-service teachers’ understanding of sustainability concepts, increases their confidence in teaching sustainability-related topics, and fosters critical engagement with real-world socio-scientific issues. The findings underscore the value of place-based learning for acquiring the competencies required in SE.

Kevin J. Reins

University of South Dakota

From Theory to Classroom: Integrating Mathematical Literacy in Preservice Teacher Planning

This presentation examines an ongoing instructional design aimed at supporting preservice teachers in integrating characteristics of mathematical literacy (ML) tasks, as outlined by Burkhart, Pead, and Stacey (2024), into their lesson planning. The objective is to foster mathematical engagement and enjoyment among middle and high school students in the local community. Preservice teachers are introduced to key theoretical frameworks in mathematics education, including Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), Embodiment Theory, motivational theory, coherence, and mind mapping, to inform and enhance their lesson development. This presentation will highlight selected lesson designs created by preservice teachers, analyzing their alignment with ML principles and their potential impact on student learning experiences.

Room: D302, Paper presentations

Christian Bokhove, Kotaro Komatsu, Katsuyuki Koishizawa, Toshio Kondo, Nobuhiko Shinomiya

University of Southampton (UK), University of Tsukuba (Japan), Junior High School at Otsuka - University of Tsukuba (Japan), Junior High School at Otsuka - University of Tsukuba (Japan), Junior High School at Otsuka - University of Tsukuba (Japan)

Crossing boundaries while designing a digital mathematics book

One challenge for technology use in mathematics education is the integration of tools in the classroom. This is true for both England and Japan, with for example Ito and Ueda (2022) highlighting the challenges of successfully integrating technology in the context of the Japanese policy decision to introduce digital books for mathematics in 2025 through the GIGA school Program. One of the aims of the EJEME project (E-textbook for Japanese and English Mathematics Education) was to co-design a digital mathematics book for Japan and England. We cross boundaries in two distinct ways. Firstly, by co-designing the digital mathematics books with representatives of two different countries, England and Japan. The education systems and classroom practices differ between the two countries, and therefore mutual understanding is first necessary on this aspect. Secondly, the boundary between researchers and practitioners. Two researchers, one from England and one from Japan, worked with three mathematics teachers in a secondary school in Japan. The aim was to co-design a book around one task on ‘patterns’ from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that both English and Japanese students find challenging. We co-designed the books in three steps. In the first step, we discussed the topic of ‘patterns’ through analysing the PISA task and other mathematical ‘pattern’ tasks. We asked the teachers to then bring pattern tasks a few days later, which we then discussed in-depth, so the research team had an understanding of the intended aims. The first author then designed a first version of a digital mathematics book with the teachers’ tasks, which was presented a week after that. The feedback that was given then led to a new version of the book. During the co-design process, we did not just converge on the content of the book, but also on design principles for the books. These principles included:• Sequencing. We agreed starting with easier, more scaffolded tasks, and then gradually increasing the difficulty.• Interactivity, for example, through activities with sliders and options for students to support their thinking with online notes.• Feedback. We agreed that the tasks students should complete should be provided with feedback, not just on the correct answer but answer common misconceptions, which the teachers provided.In this 20-minute presentation, we report on the co-design process from start to finish, which we denote as a good example of expansive design across borders.

Ellen Jameson, Rachad Zaki

University of Cambridge

Scaling up, expanding out: Increasing the potential for impact of the Cambridge Mathematics Framework

We will discuss a design challenge arising from the trajectory of a decade of work on the Cambridge Mathematics Framework: How can we scale up the breadth of application of the tools we’ve designed to aid expert decision-making in educational design in mathematics? Must it scale linearly with the number of people using it, or are there design solutions which would substantially increase what individual users are able to accomplish? What are the thresholds of expertise and experience users must meet in order to be productive in ways which are valid for their settings?
The Cambridge Mathematics Framework and CMF Nexus, the digital platform which hosts tools for authoring, accessing and using the content, were designed and built by a team of knowledge brokers, collectively involving expertise in primary and secondary mathematics teaching, curriculum and resource design, and educational research. To the extent possible, we evaluated the trustworthiness and usability of our methodology and content, and integrated feedback from this process into our design cycles. As our content expanded, we were able to take on projects involving wider year ranges of curricula, but in our initial implementations the use of CMF Nexus was limited to the core Cambridge Mathematics team. We then began piloting mediated use of CMF Nexus by curriculum development partners and clients, still with extensive core team support. More recently, we’ve been training consultants to use CMF Nexus as fully as the core team does, laying the foundations for upcoming research on mapping reliability and opening the door to exploring wider scaling issues, involving not just breadth of application but also depth and sustainability of impacts.
In terms of potential impact, we’ve expanded from limited local and regional projects into working with national jurisdictions, first through consulting on the statistics and probability portion of the Australian national curriculum with ACARA, a jurisdiction serving 4 million students, and most recently a review and analysis of the full mathematics curriculum of a jurisdiction of over 850,000 students. We are exploring ways to address capacity bottlenecks and take on a larger number of such projects sustainably. We are interested in discussing the solutions we are experimenting with so far, and we are open to comments, suggestions, questions, and discussion of similar issues you face or have faced in your own projects.

Saadeddine Shehab, Gloriana González, Edward Powers

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Design Principles for Creating Human-Centered Design Problem-based Lessons: Examples from Geometry Instruction

Research studies show that engaging K-12 students in design-based challenges has a positive impact on their learning of the discipline and the development of life-long learning skills. Using design principles to create design-based challenges is a work in progress as the field adopts new theoretical frameworks for students’ design work in different K-12 settings. In this work we ask, what design principles can guide the creation of design-based challenges in the context of secondary school mathematics? Authors (2024) presented a framework for creating Human-Centered Design (HCD) Problem-based Geometry Lessons (PBGL). The framework is based on three research supported perspectives: 1) the lessons must be supported by the curricular standards, 2) the lessons must be guided by a design thinking model, and 3) the lessons must support students in applying design justice principles to address a challenge that is relevant to them and their communities. In this work, we build on this framework and the design principles that are presented in the Design and Implementation Framework for Mathematical Modeling Tasks (DIFMT) (Geiger et al., 2022) to create HCD-PBGL lessons. These principles include the nature of the challenge, relevance and motivation, accessibility, feasibility of approach, feasibility of outcome, and didactical flexibility. For example, our lessons included an Engage, Experiment, and Explain sections guided by the didactical flexibility principle that states a challenge can be divided into subsections to prompt students’ engagement in solving the challenge. These sections align with the HCD principles and scaffold the students’ experience as they work on the HCD-PBGL challenge. We demonstrate how we used these principles to design lesson prototypes that supported our researchers and teachers’ teams in lesson study – a professional development model that is composed of four phases: study, plan, teach, and reflect. Involving the teachers in creating these lessons is key as many of the principles rely on the students’ mathematical prior knowledge, their grade level and personal circumstances, and the authentic connection to their real-world. We anticipate that our work can guide the creation of design challenges in other K-12 settings and disciplines.

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