ABSTRACT

Masterman’s chapter reminds us that there is much to be learned from practitioners themselves as they engage with the day-to-day realities of learners and learning. She describes four research studies into how practitioners design for learning in complex settings and what considerations they take into account when framing tasks, resources and courses of study. Design for learning emerges as a social practice, governed by precedent and habit, constrained by pragmatic issues such as class size and timetabling, and informed by ‘a range of intellectual and socio-cultural influences’ of which designers may not always be fully conscious. Masterman’s work has aimed not only to describe design practice more thoroughly but to support the development of tools that could enhance that practice. Although she is hopeful that ‘a supportive digital tool which is rooted in a principled theory of educational processes’ can be accepted by practitioners, she notes the difficulties – computational, theoretical, and organizational/political – that such a project must still overcome.