Participatory design of teacher dashboards: navigating the tension between teacher input and theories on teacher professional vision

Abstract

In the field of AI in education, there is a movement toward human-centered design in which the primary stakeholders are collaborators in establishing the design and functionality of the AI system (participatory design). Several authors have noted that there is a potential tension in participatory design between involving stakeholders and, thus, increasing uptake of the system on the one hand, and the use of educational theory on the other hand. The goal of the present perspective article is to unpack this tension in more detail, focusing on the example of teacher dashboards. Our contribution to theory is to show that insights from the research field of teacher professional vision can help explain why stakeholder involvement may lead to tension. In particular, we discuss that the sources of information that teachers use in their professional vision, and which data sources could be included on dashboards, might differ with respect to whether they actually relate to student learning or not. Using this difference as a starting point for participatory design could help navigate the aforementioned tension. Subsequently, we describe several implications for practice and research that could help move the field of human centered design further.