Hugh Burkhardt
Shell Centre for Mathematical Education
The University of Nottingham, UK

This paper develops the concept of “strategic design”, the design implications of the interactions of a product with the whole user system, and relates it to other aspects of design. It describes some examples of poor strategic design that occur frequently, and some cases where effective strategic design has been important in the large-scale impact of an ambitious educational innovation. From these, the paper then seeks to infer some principles for strategic design. It is aimed at the three major constituencies of ISDDE: designers, design team leaders, and the client-funders that often commission their work. The hope is that sharpened awareness of the importance, and the challenges, of strategic design may help to increase the impact of good design as a whole.

Nisa Figueiredo and Frans van Galen, Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht, Netherlands
Koeno Gravemeijer, Eindhoven School of Education, Netherlands

When designing mathematical educational tasks, a designer tries to anticipate how students will react. Students, however, may look at a task in a way that differs much from how teachers or instructional designers look at it. In relation to this, one speaks of the difference between the actor’s and the observer’s point of view. In this article, we elaborate on this distinction, outlining a theoretical and empirical perspective on the differences between these two points of view. To do so, we use the data from a small scale teaching experiment with a geometry applet that we had designed.

Michigan State University, USA

The need to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics has been a focus of attention in the US over our entire careers. There have been waves of national interest in mathematics education that have attracted mathematicians and mathematics educators to the work of improving K-12 mathematics education. Today we will focus our remarks in two areas, our own curriculum development work including the story of how we came to engage in and accomplish the work and our comments on the challenges we face in future work to improve mathematics teaching and learning. We expect that many of the challenges we see are also challenges for mathematics education worldwide.

This is an extended response to Schoenfeld, AH. (2009) Bridging the Cultures of Educational Research and Design. Educational Designer, 1(2).

“The view that I want to present is that Alan Schoenfeld’s paper opens up a very important debate in a challenging and incisive way, but that both the foundation and the range of the argument need further development.”