Education Design Patterns

Introduction

By design patterns, i mean a solution or framework for a known problem. In software, this involves defining both the problem and also a methodology for understanding it and designing a solution for it. There is no reason for this practice to be limited to software analysis, as the language is general enough that it can be extended to many fields.

However, the idea of a design pattern only encompasses looking at kinds of problems and kinds of strategies for solving the problem. In this context, design patterns do not provide specific solutions, they are about understanding known and unspoken strategies. This is not a recipe for completing a task, but instead a way to understand what the task at hand is. In particular, wikipedia notes Algorithms are not thought of as design patterns, since they solve computational problems rather than design problems.

References: wikipedia

Rationale

These patterns hopes to provide a language by which we can understand and talk more objectively about the goals and rationales of learning and education. How can one objectively or provably analyze the design of a textbook? What normalized ways of evaluating bias or appropriateness exist? How can we evaluate state requirements and exams in a meaningful and consistent way? In any given class, not everyone will need (or be made) to learn concepts if the class is largely algorithmic, we should use books that are aware of this.

Benefits and Adoption

Design patterns exist to bring a way to talk about educational problem solving strategy, but they do not imply any kind of adherence. Their purpose is only to abstract and make tangible the goal you are trying to attain. This is not a buzzword to drive curriculum creation, it is a way of providing a language to sensibly discuss methods of problem solving. They are only aids in understanding current and future modes of learning by exploring the ways we are presenting material, tasks and problem solving to other people.

Examples of Patterns

In education, we commonly discover these patterns, for example:

• evaluation
  • the quiz
  • the problem set
  • the question with included solution
  • the question without solution
• instruction
  • the step-by-step example
  • narrative explanation
  • pictorial explanation

Of course, instruction is more complicated than this, there are other ways, even in narrative that we choose to explain problems, some problems are related, others are explained while others are solved outright in order to provide a basis for similar questions.

In reality, i do not know if this is the correct ordering, perhaps the right way to look at this is to start with each of the subtopics and ask why each exists, this certainly seems to provide more insight than the prior list. That first half may be refactored as follows:

• the quiz
  • evaluating cumulative retention
• the problem set
  • evaluating local comprehesion
• question with attached solution
  • evaluating correctness without implying technique (this is version of the step-by-step pattern, if you squint, but they seem to have different purposes)
• question without solution
  • encouraging non-evaluative exploration

These may or may not be correct, but they provide an insight as to why we see these methods over and over again and imply a purpose to an instructional method. Walter Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis is focused on non-evaluative exploration whereas the McDougal/Littel Algebra I textbook on my bookshelf is clearly focused on retention & correctness which makes sense when you consider that the target audiences differ by at least six years of mathematical instruction.

Currently, the words that are highlighted in Education books are: evaluating, encouraging, exposing, stimulating, &c. And that's all well and good, but what are those things acting upon, what do they evaluate, what do they stimulate. There are lots of ways to expose content, but can you think of them?

The purpose of these design patterns is to collect these strategies for others to understand and make sensible evaluations of new pedagogy and curricula.

Textbook Visual Systems

to be filled in at a later date