Developing the human, material, and structural aspects of infrastructure for collaborative curriculum design: Lessons learned

Abstract

Collaborative curriculum design is a process through which two objectives are typically pursued, namely, the development of curriculum and materials for use in everyday classroom settings, and, through the discussions that this process engenders, teacher professional development. Yet, as described in the preceding chapters, achieving these goals is not easy. While many factors influence design team outcomes, the human, material, and structural aspects of infrastructure that are present in a collaborative design context are particularly important. First, the people engaging directly and indirectly in collaborative curriculum design process influence both its process and its outcomes. Second, teacher design teams can be facilitated or hampered by the material resources that they have available to them or that they create for themselves. Third, the structural conditions under which teams work, including policies, norms and routines, wield powerful influence on the teams’ motivation, feasibility and effectiveness. This chapter begins by briefly discussing the relationship between the two goals of collaborative curriculum design (curriculum development and teacher development). Next, the human, material, and structural aspects of infrastructure are introduced as an analytical frame. The body of the chapter revisits key findings from the cases given throughout this book, in light of the processes and outcomes of collaborative curriculum design, as well as the human, material, and structural aspects of infrastructure that can support them. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of these insights (which constitute recommendations for practice and policy), discussion of the findings, and recommendations for future research.