Editorial
Hugh Burkhardt
Susan McKenney
Daniel Pead
Welcome to Educational Designer #2
1We are delighted to offer you this second issue of Educational Designer. It follows the pattern of the first: a piece on a strategic issue in design, an analytic account of a specific design, and a distinguished designer’s personal account of his approach to design and methods of working. They break new ground in at least two respects, describing the design of support for a professional development program, and of software applets.
There are, of course, many more issues to address as the journal develops and matures. We have been gratified and encouraged by the response to ED1– both the comments and suggestions we have received, and the number and duration of the visits to the site.
This issue represents the next step in building Educational Designer into a valuable channel of communication within the professional design community – for the exchange of information on, analysis of, and theory building for all aspects of design and development. The development of the third issue is well under way. Plans for the fourth are converging.
We are keen to receive contributions. To get a feeling for the goals of the journal, and the opportunities that this medium offers, please read the Guide to Contributors and look at the issues online.
Hugh Burkhardt, Chair of the Advisory Board
Susan McKenney, Editor
Faculty of Behavioural Sciences
University of Twente
Twente, Netherlands
Daniel Pead, Design Editor
Shell Centre, School of Education
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK
About the Editors
2Hugh Burkhardt has been at the Shell Centre for Mathematical Education at the University of Nottingham since 1976, as Director until 1992. Since then he has led a series of international projects in the UK and the US, including Balanced Assessment, the Mathematical Assessment Resource Service (MARS), and its development of a Toolkit for Change Agents.
He takes an 'engineering' view of educational research and development - that it is about systematic design and development to make a complex system work better, with theory as a guide and empirical evidence the ultimate arbiter. His core interest is in the dynamics of curriculum change. He sees assessment as one important 'tool for change' among the many that are needed to help achieve some resemblance between goals of policy and outcomes in practice. His other interests include making mathematics more functional for everyone through teaching real problem solving and mathematical modeling, computer-aided math education, software interface design and human-computer interaction.
He graduated from Oxford University and the University of Birmingham where, alongside research in theoretical physics and undergraduate teaching, he first developed his work on teaching the uses of mathematics to help solve everyday life problems. He remains occasionally active in elementary particle physics.
He founded and is Executive Chair of ISDDE and Chair of the Advisory Board for Educational Designer.
Susan McKenney is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum (Faculty of Behavioral Sciences) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Dr. McKenney’s current research and teaching focus on curriculum development, teacher professional development and, often, the supportive role of computers in those processes. Careful design, evaluation and revision of educational improvement initiatives is a recurring theme in her consultancy and research endeavours, most of which are situated in the Netherlands, India or southern Africa.
She is a member of the ISDDE executive board and editor of Educational Designer.
Daniel Pead is Technical Director of the Shell Centre and MARS, leading all the ICT work of the team. Senior Research Fellow in the University of Nottingham, he managed the work of the problem solving team for the UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority World Class Tests/Arena project as well as designing its computer-based tasks and learning materials. Currently he is researching a range of options for the computer-based assessment of Mathematics. Earlier he helped design and programmed the videodisc-based World of Number materials for the UK National Curriculum Council. More recently he has contributed to the design and develoment of video-rich professional development materials and interactive learning applets for the Bowland Maths initiative which is now being distributed to schools in England.
He is Secretary of ISDDE and Design Editor of Educational Designer.
Acknowledgement: The pop-up windows used for figures and tables have been implemented using the open-source "ThickBox" utility written by Cody Lindley.