THIS IS A PROCESS
Through this design CHALLENGE, I worked with my group of peers and colleagues to work through a design process together and more full understanding of how our process impacts our learning. Throughout the process, we were challenged, had "Ah-HA!" moments, and worked well as a team. I learned lots about myself and those in my program, and would love for you to join me on this journey, through Phases 1 to 4 of the design process.
"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing."
-W. Edwards Deming
Gabby
Kaitlin
Sarah
Gabby
Maddy
Kaitlin
Me! (Rachel)
phase one
Discovering insights into problems of practice
Task One
Interview with a Colleague
This is where we start our process. Gabby and I sat down to interview one another to set the foundation of this project. This is where we set the foundation for the rest of the challenge, because we were able to discover and narrow down our "unique needs" as professional, depending on our previous field experience. As you can see from the photo on the right, this was a lighthearted experience even though our conversation topic was, at times, difficult based on our experiences. We both realized during this point that some of our challenges were similar, like dealing with parent involvement (too little or too much), and differentiation. The issue that we both decided we were struggling with at the Kindergarten level was assessment, and this begins our journey.
THEN WE MADE OUR CONVERSATION A COLLABORATION
Task Two
Exploring Divergent Possibilities
This portion of our process involved bringing the conversation that Gabby and I had about our needs, and collaborating with classmates to see what they felt were their needs and to find overlap between the four of us. I really enjoyed this portion because it allowed us to open up about our experiences and explore the similarities and differences in our school communities during practicum. As you can see from my artifact on the left, we had a lot of thoughts about this!
phase TWO
Defining your problem of practice
THIS IS WHERE WE NARROWED DOWN OUR PRIORITIES TO FIND A CONCISE PROBLEM
Task Three
With our groups, we sat down to engage with our problem, which we settled on relating back to assessment in kindergarten, which is where all of our grades are for field. This was a really comprehensive and helpful to narrow our search. We worked through various categories to test our problem of practice, and to think about what needs to be considered in our topic and ideas. This was a fruitful and productive discussion, and sent us on a great path to find our perfect question!
Converging on the Right Problem
HOW DO I AUTHENTICALLY AND MEANINGFULLY IMPLEMENT ASSESSMENT PRACTICES FOR KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS SO THAT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IF AUTHENTICALLY MEASURED?
Task Four
Defining your problem of practice
This portion of the journey was even more collaborative, using experts in our community and on the internet. The the left, there is a transcript of an interview between Gabby and a colleague of hers who teaches Kindergarten. She shared some of the techniques that have worked for her in Kindergarten assessment. Below are two screenshots from Facebook, where I am involved in a teacher community group, and made a post asking Kindergarten teachers which assessment methods had worked for them, and this resulted in a discussion between teachers in the online space!
phase Three
Developing possible solutions
We sparked teacher conversation!
Even experienced teachers were learning!
phase FOUR
DEVELOPING POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
HOW DO I AUTHENTICALLY AND MEANINGFULLY IMPLEMENT ASSESSMENT PRACTICES FOR KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS SO THAT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IF AUTHENTICALLY MEASURED?
This part of our journey is where we took our problem of practice and put it to the test! We put it through two different design processes to look at it with a new perspective and learned a lot about our "WHY?" and, more importantly, about what comes next!
Task Five
Exploring different design processes
Please click above to understand more fully the process of exploring design processes in our problem. This portion of our process had the most "Ah-Ha!" moments, and felt like we were making real progress in our problem of practice as a team.
Galileo
Idea generation​: asking the right questions and finding the right problems. Ideation and
asking questions in the process like: What matters about this topic? What are the issues, questions, and ideas surrounding this topic? What are the unresolved questions and/or problems within this topic? What do students need?
Feedback
Double-Diamond Design Model: Teacher as Designer: ​Finding the right problem,
mapping the right subjects in appropriate curriculum and outcomes, day-to-day pedagogy, iteration and reiteration using the learning intentions and outcomes to develop key understanding(s).
Radical collaboration
IDEO
"There are four characteristics of the design thinking mindset: it is human-centered (addresses the need to better understand the needs/motives of our students); collaborative (multiple perspectives offer more creative solutions); optimistic (believing that we can all create change, no matter the constraints); and experimental (the design process is iterative, needing constant refinement)."
Now that we feel like we have a good grasp on the ins and outs of our problem of practice, it was time for us to start working on some sort of prototype to workshop with an expert and to compare with our experiences. This portion may have been the most difficult part of the design process challenge, as we were now faced with the actual "doing it" after spending so much time thinking about and planning for this outcome. The initial prototype was written out on paper, and then we worked on our computers to create a more polished and clear idea of our final template that we could use practically.
Task Six
Generating and testing possible design solutions
As we navigated through this task, there were a lot of different factors we began to consider. We realized that we needed to make two different assessment charts, one for individual students and one for large or even whole group assessment. We considered the importance of including the subject or activity, as well as time of day to take patterns of behaviour into account, different code that would be straightforward and easy to remember, while also providing clarity to the assessment, while making sure the factors we felt were important were included.
phase FOUR
Delivering your design solution
We have arrived at the end of our journey! Through many trials and errors, we have worked as a group to create an assessment tool for Kindergarten students that we feel would allow us to track, monitor, and implement formative assessment strategies in our classroom. Below, our artifacts allow us to use time of day as a reference point, understand the different between personal growth and outcome focus, and glance at one assessment process for a class of students, while maintaining individual student progress sheets to understand tracking of behaviours. Through this process, I feel that each step was clear and allowed us to engage more fully and completely with our problem of practice, all while working together to collaborate on a final project we are all proud of. I consider this process to be a success, and I look forward to taking my learning into the classroom and my career.
-Rachel
Finding the Right Solution
Task Seven
REFERENCES
Campbell School of Innovation. (n.d.). Innovation. Retrieved from https://csi.campbellusd.org/innovation
Galileo Educational Network, (2018). ​Designing for learning​: Teachers as designers​. ​Retrieved from ​http://galileo.org/teachersasdesigners/designing-for-learning/
Galileo Educational Network, (2018). ​Fulfilling student needs, idea generation, feedback, and radical collaboration:​ Finding the right problem in Teachers as designers.
Retrieved from http://galileo.org/teachersasdesigners/finding-the-right-problem/
Quotes About The Power of Community. (2019, February 01). Retrieved from https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/articles/8538-quotes-about-the-power-of-community