Empowering Future Educators: Bridging Design Theory and Curriculum Studies to Inspire Transformative Change in Schools

Insights from design fields and the field of curriculum studies have been highly critical of what Biesta (2015) calls social orders that many educational design models use to socialize the young, yet dialogue between the two areas of study has been infrequent. In our ongoing work, we have considered the potential of combining perspectives from these two areas of study to support pre-service teachers in designing their classrooms as they engage with changing conditions. When thinking about change in schools, we find it productive to use Cuban’s (1988, 2013) distinction between first-order changes that make what exists more effective or efficient versus second-order changes that more substantially shift the roles, goals, and/or structures of schools to address persistent challenges. We focus on support for second-order changes. This study examines three cases of pre-service teachers designing within a course that integrates design perspectives with theoretical frameworks from curriculum studies and other fields. The cases demonstrate how a course integrating theoretical perspectives from other areas of study can support pre-service teachers in designing for second-order change. However, our study also suggests that a deeper theoretical grounding in curriculum studies might further support pre-service teachers when they design for second-order changes.