This is an excerpt from a book about supporting faculty in their Professional Development that the founders of TEA are writing. This is taken from the chapter on DESIGN. 

Which of these two rooms would you rather learn in?

Why should the life of the mind preclude the 5 senses?

In our consulting work we have enjoyed bringing the concept of Design to the forefront of teachers’ professional thinking, and yet it sometimes feels like this concept, Design, is the least likely of our 7 core concepts to put down roots in the day-to-day lives of teachers, not to mention the departments in which they work. This may simply be that we have not taught it very well. It may be that other concepts that we share pay greater and quicker dividends to teachers in the classroom. For example, there's no doubt that when a teacher moves from a deficit model to a Capacity model of teaching that huge changes in students occur almost immediately. 

But we want to resist the urge to think of Design as merely a frill--an add-on to one’s teaching that a teacher can take or leave. We want to argue in this chapter that Design is a crucial component for teachers to integrate into their professional lives, and that it greatly impacts a wide swath of their day-to-day work. 

Here is what we wrote for the Introduction to Design on our Acceleration in Context  website:

Ask a teacher, “How do you organize your class?” and you will get an answer.

Ask a teacher, “How do you DESIGN your class?” and you will get a very different answer. Tone of voice is frequently lighter, less weighed down with predictability; there is more ripeness of possibility, more gracefulness of thought. 

Faculty are not often invited to leverage conceptual or metaphorical organizing principles to guide their professional development. Design Mind—a professional development approach developed inside the Acceleration in Context Initiative—does this by incorporating design concepts and metaphors from disciplines as diverse as Biology, Architecture, Cognitive Science, and Advertising. We help faculty develop mindfulness, playfulness, and intentionality about how to use Design principles to improve their teaching. 

Design Mind creates an alternative to merely “doing it like it’s always been done.” Design Mind offers an aesthetic and intellectual arena. Faculty “find” themselves inside Design, and once they create curriculum or lessons or programs using Design principles, there is a different kind of ownership. A Design sensibility embraces change, new variables, and evolution in the classroom. 

In working with faculty,  we did not for long hold onto the “Design Mind” branding. For one thing, we discovered that the phrase had been trademarked by a design firm. More importantly, faculty have excellent BS meters, and the phrase felt a little too precious coming out of our mouths when we stood in front of a room full of teachers. Despite our misgivings over the phrase, we felt--and still feel--very strongly that Design plays a crucial role in nurturing a teacher’s professional development. Why is it then, that this concept sometimes meets with resistance? There are several interconnected reasons:

1. Elsewhere in the book we talk about how the history of public education in the United States is tied to industrialization, capitalism, and the rise of the factory model. But we don't need to know this connection exists. We can feel it just by peeking in the door of a typical college classroom, or by perusing a typical college class syllabus. Utilitarianism has deep roots in education and is the defacto Design norm--whether educators know it or not, and generally they do not. Utilitarianism is so embedded in our education culture that we do not see it. Or if we do see it, we do not challenge it. One of the classic Design tenets is that form and function implicate each other. Thus, if a classroom has 19th century design DNA,  it confines and defines the choices that get made in the space. 

2. When teachers internalize the Utilitarianism philosophy, it impacts their pedagogy. They often think that their focus should only be “teaching the content.” Any other inputs into the class setting are seen as a distraction. 

3. As a result of these Utilitarian influences, even if a teacher wants to integrate new ideas into the classroom, too often teachers have to fight with the classroom space, trying to build a circle out of the desks, trying to move away from the front of the room, trying to integrate art materials into a space not made for this. It is a tiring battle, and one that teachers often give up fighting.

4. Even if a teacher does feel comfortable reshaping the classroom, they may still not do so. This is because faculty do not want to leave an imprint on a space they do not control. Every teacher knows that something as innocuous as forgetting to erase the blackboard can lead to a nasty email from the teacher who next uses the room. As a result, a teacher and her students can spend the whole semester in the class space without leaving any evidence that they were ever there. We do not nest. We leave no imprint. 

5. The perceived potential for showing flamboyance in Design thinking can make teachers feel exposed or call attention to themselves. 

6. Finally, even though many teachers agree in spirit with this call to Design, faculty may not feel that integrating Design thinking into their teaching is something they actually know how  to do.