Designing Educative Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning

TLDR

Educative curriculum materials are K–12 resources designed to foster both student and teacher learning, serving as cognitive tools that situate teacher knowledge in practice. The study seeks to develop design heuristics for educative curriculum materials and to delineate what teacher learning facilitated by such materials might entail. The authors propose heuristics organized around subject‑matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge for topics, and for disciplinary practices, while addressing design tensions between guidance and choice.

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.