Lesson Design Workshops

In TePlab, we have a strong commitment to mobilising our didactical research for improving the quality of education. We also realise that the mere transfer of research-based knowledge to teachers is not the best strategy to make this happen as it overlooks the crucial importance of teachers’ professional knowledge, their familiarity with teaching practices, and the value of interactions among practicing teachers. Therefore, we developed Lesson Design Workshops (LDW), a methodology for bridging research and practice through the cocreation of educational products by researchers and teachers. In LDW, teachers and researchers are equal, active partners who bring their complementary competencies and experiences to the table. The LDW methodology is sparked by three decades of practical experiences in educational development projects and further developed and conceptualised in TePlab in recent years, drawing on Donald Schön’s work on professional knowledge and on research on didactic modelling. Read more about the background and principles of LDW in this article.

The format and practical organisation of LDW are not set in stone and allow for the flexibility required to align with varied contexts such as differences in participants’ needs and possibilities, available resources and time, and the content addressed. However, there are some key elements that all LDW share. Basically, there is a series of three to five meetings (in person or online) of about two hours, accompanied by in-between assignments. This basic format enables teachers to participate within their available time for regular lesson planning. The meetings and assignments are very result/product-oriented: the focus is always on the production of lessons and teaching materials that the participants can take home and directly apply in their classroom practice. Didactical models are translated into practical didactic tool used in the meetings and assignments. These models can be grounded in a variety of educational/didactic theories. The focus of LDW is determined in dialogue between researchers and practitioners. This is important to attune the needs and questions emerging from problems experienced in practice, and what didactical research may have to offer to address them. To make sure that the time and resources invested in LDW benefit as many educational practices as possible, we find it important to share the outputs as educational commons.

LDW can take shape in diverse ways, not only with regard to the content addressed but also when it comes to group constellation, starting point, purposes, practical organisation, partnerships, etc. Some examples:

• TePlab reserchers have been involved in LDW on very diverse topics such as action-oriented climate education, integrating sustainability in the curriculum, teaching argumentation skills, programming, scientific literacy, addressing real-world problems in the classroom, etc.
• The focus can either be on specific subject content (e.g. climate change, programming), or on a didactical challenge that can be addressed from different subject content perspectives (e.g. handling controversy in the classroom, teaching students to develop high-quality arguments)
• LDW have been organised for compulsory school teachers, for lecturers in higher education, for adult educators, for teacher students, and in hybrid sessions involving both students and professionally active teachers
• When used within teacher education, it is either integrated in an ongoing course, where the workshop meetings are spread out over time, or added to a course as a specific module
• Although the basic format of LDW is 3-5 meetings devoted to planning lessons, variants are possible. One variant is where participants also try out the planned lessons and take the experiences back to group for discussion and finetuning of the lesson plans. Another one is that participants write reflection texts about the developed lesson plans and analyse the teaching with the help of didactical models
• Sometimes, TePlab researchers take the initiative to organise and design LDW, for instance in the context of ongoing research projects; sometimes, LDW are developed on demand and/or in collaboration with educational authorities or partner organisations such as NGOs
• We have organised LDW for groups of colleagues who work together on educational activities (e.g. a group of teachers involved in the same course, a school team developing a project together) as well as workshops that bring together individual teachers who work each on their own lessons and materials but all address the same topic or didactical challenge
• Sometimes, new lesson plans and teaching materials are created from scratch; sometimes, existing lessons or teaching materials (e.g. from other teachers, NGOs) are taken as a starting point, further developed, and tailored to the participants’ own, unique teaching context
• LDW can be organised online, in person, or in hybrid formats

TePlab also conducts research about LDW. This helps us to ensure that the design of LDW itself is informed by didactical research and that the lessons learned from conducted LDW are used to improve subsequent workshops.