ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the specification for twenty-first-century design developed by the project consultant SRI International. It describes the introductory three-day workshop provided at the start of each teacher cohort’s work. It was intended to provide teachers with an opportunity to consider the implications for the design of twenty-first-century lessons that would necessarily involve their students in elements of collaboration, interdisciplinary knowledge construction, self-regulated learning, real-world problem-solving and innovation, and skilled communication. Each dimension was presented in the form of a rubric. Contrasting examples of lesson activities were used to help teachers identify the critical aspects of these elements of twenty-first-century design for themselves as learners. In this chapter, the connection between the workshop and the cycles of action research is explained and illustrated. During the cycles, the teachers used the rubrics to measure the strength of their lesson designs based on the evidence of students’ engagement with the design in the research lessons. The use of the rubrics opened a conversation that inevitably focused on critical aspects of the object of learning as a stimulus for teachers’ action.
