How teachers design their materials: Implications for instructional design

Research on teacher thinking and teacher planning conducted over the past few years suggests that teachers rarely proceed in a “systematic” fashion when planning or carrying out instruction. What happens when teachers become designers of instructional materials? In a series of studies of teachers and novice instructional designers, data were collected on: the form taken by initial ideas for materials; elements involved in initial thinking; constraints perceived; the train of the design process; and reflections on the design after completing it. Results showed that prescriptive models of how instructional design should proceed frequently do not match the reality of instructional design in practice. Several changes in instructional design procedures might take these differences into account: designers might engage in “synectics” sessions, for example, rather than focusing immediately on objectives. And incompleteness in a design appears to have particular fascination for instructors. Finally, the studies point out the need for more careful and comprehensive treatments of what “design” is, and of why some are more successful at it than others.