Promoting sustainable teacher change during design research on seamless learning

Abstract

Design research has been the major methodology when learning sciences researchers design and implement interventions to bring education change in schools. However, how to promote systematic and sustainable change in design research remains a big challenge. The study is part of a three-year project that brought a seamless learning innovation to transform primary three (P3) and four science learning. During the first year enactment, we had one teacher and one P3 experimental class. We followed the same teacher and class to Primary four. Another teacher and experimental class joined the project at P4. Audio/video recordings of teacher-researcher weekly meetings, research team weekly meeting minutes, selected audio/video recordings of science lessons and field notes, teacher reflection and interview audios, and student artefacts were collected over about three years of time. We identified teacher to be the major agency for sustainable education change. We apply a Structure/Agency framework and a teacher qualification model when describing and analyzing teacher learning and teacher change during the seamless learning project. Our results showed teacher knowledge, belief, and practice change was facilitated and constrained by the school environment and the change was not of the same pace and synchronized but affected by each other. The paper provides empirical data and analytical framework for teacher change in design research context.