Report to the Fellows

from the ISDDE Executive and its Chair, October 2009

This report comes to you following the conference in Cairns, Queensland, Australia and the annual meeting there of the ISDDE Executive.

In addition to the successful continuation of the work of the society, including the annual conference and the award of the 2009 ISDDE prize, the past year has seen the launch of two major new initiatives: the e-journal Educational Designer and the first ISDDE Regional Meeting. At the time of writing, the society has 94 Fellows.

The Cairns Conference

Again the annual conference was the main event of the year. Held in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, it was organized by Kaye Stacey and Robyn Pierce of the University of Melbourne, with and Will Morony of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers. They chose the theme Principles for Design, focussing on four design goals: intellectual engagement; conceptual change; usability and uptake; inclusion, equity and social justice.

We are enormously grateful to Kaye and her colleagues for finding the lovely semi-tropical venue and, particularly, for a pattern of working that promoted intense and focus discussion of the issues. Each working day began with a plenary talk and ended with a software demonstration session; the rest of the time was spent in the four working groups on how these related to the design of: curriculum documents and assessment; curriculum materials; educational software; and design for system change.

Conference papers and contributions are available on the ISDDE website.

The ISDDE Prize:

On September 28th 2009, the first evening of the Cairns conference, Phil Daro announced the award of the $10,000 ISDDE Prize  for 2009 to

“Paul Black of Kings College London for a lifetime’s achievement of excellence in educational design and development in science and in technology“

Paul Black responded to the award saying:

“I am delighted - such positive appraisal by knowledgeable colleagues is a rare and special award.  So my thanks to Phil and others who set up the award in the first place and then looked so kindly on my work.  I am just sorry I could not be there to accept in person.”

For those who do not know of Paul Black’s work, something of its range, ambition and impact can be gathered from his article in the first issue of Educational Designer.

Phil Daro also presented Prize certificates to the 2008 winners:

These prizes, “The Eddies”, are in their second year.  They were established in 2008, through an initiative of Phil Daro.  He chairs the Prize Committee; the other members are anonymous.  Nominations from Fellows for the 2010 Prize will be invited soon.

Educational Designer:

The first two issues of the Society’s e-journal have emerged, see www.educationaldesigner.org  

The first issue has major contributions by Paul Black, Chris Schunn and Malcolm Swan.  Those in the second issue are by Alan Schoenfeld, David Webb and Peter Boon.  They addressed a mixture of design issues and accounts of specific projects, along with individual contributions under the series heading “A designer speaks”. 

This pattern is sustained by the third issue contributors: Hugh Burkhardt; Nisa Figueredo, Frans van Galen and Koeno Gravemeijer; and the designers Glenda Lappan and Betty Phillips. This issue is planned for November. 

The response to Educational Designer has been gratifying, both in the favourable comments we have received and in the statistics on the visits to the site (click here for statistitics as of 5th Jan 2010).

As to the future, further contributions are in the pipeline.  Some are being refereed, others have been promised, or conceived. We are currently planning the first Special Issue, on assessment design; it will build on discussions at this and earlier conferences.  Fellows and others are encouraged to submit contributions, noting the Guidelines on the website.

Susan McKenney, the Editor, has been on extended maternity leave; in the meantime, while keeping her in touch, I have been acting as editor.  Over the coming year Susan will take up the reins. Major credit belongs to Daniel Pead who, as Design Editor, has developed the website and helped the authors to exploit the extra dimensions that an e-journal offers, particularly in allowing the substantial exemplification that is so important in writing about design.

The ISDDE Executive is the Editorial Advisory Board for Educational Designer.  Comments and suggestions on policy, and on authors to be invited, will be welcome.

Regional Meetings

Building on our policy decision in Egmond, the first such meeting took place in London on May 26 and 27 2009.  It was organised and chaired by Angela Hall, Director of the Nuffield Foundation Curriculum Programme.  (The Foundation has an enviable record in creating major advances in science education over the past half century, a few of which are outlined in Paul Black’s piece in ED1)   The main aim of the meeting was to improve communication between science and mathematics curriculum developers, with the purpose of informing each other of current and planned work and to explore potential partnerships and synergies. Two central themes provided focus:

Many of those who took part were new to the Society – and the number of science educators more than matched that from mathematics.  The discussions were lively, and we all learnt a lot.  Reports on the proceedings, by a Nuffield Foundation staff member, can be found on the ISDDE website – another new feature. 

The Executive agreed that we should encourage further meetings of this kind, bearing in mind the need to complement, rather than compete with, the annual conferences.  Suggestions for specific meetings are invited  (you are likely to be asked to chair).

Annual Conferences

These conferences give members an opportunity to share the experience and challenges of educational design and development within the educational and social structures of their various countries.  They also provide, within the Executive meetings, at the closing session, and informally, a chance for face-to-face discussions on the development of the Society’s work.

The Chairs will outline their plans to the Fellows in due course, looking for comments and suggestions.

Elections to the Executive

In 2009, Jan de Lange, Kaye Stacey and our Vice Chair, Phil Daro completed their terms.  The Executive expressed our gratitude to them all for the work they have done for the Society over the decade since our first discussions on the need for a society of educational designers. As in 2008, the process to select three new Executive members took place during October/November 2009. Three nominations were received, and consequently:

Phil Daro (re-elected)
Angela Hall
Glenda Lappan

...have been duly elected to the ISDDE executive from 1st January 2010. The current members of the Executive are listed here.

Nomination and election of members and Fellows

Anyone concerned with educational; design can become a member of ISDDE.  Fellows are appointed by the Executive on nomination by a Fellow of the Society, as set out in the Constitution (see the website). Following previous practice, the Executive agreed that Fellowships be offered to those who attended the Cairns Conference who are not already Fellows.  There are now 94 Fellows of the Society.

The isdde website

The website www.isdde.org was re-vamped in 2008. Papers and reports from the Cairns conference and the London regional meeting are now on the public site, with more to follow.  Papers from Egmond 08 and files from the first two Oxford conferences can be accessed by logging in with a members' password (contact Daniel Pead to obtain the password).

The policy is that this is an informal website for disseminating anything of interest to the community, including news and conference announcements, while www.educationaldesigner.org is reserved for the Journal, with its more formal review process.

Please send any submissions for the website to the ISDDE Secretary and Design Editor, Daniel.Pead@nottingham.ac.uk

With best wishes
Hugh Burkhardt, October 2009
(Updated January 2010)

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