Designing With Teachers

Professional Development in a Culture of Participatory Learning
Ioana Literat and Rebecca C. Itow
Towards a Theory of Participatory Professional Development
Ioana Literat
Vital Signs: Designing for Student and Teacher Participation in a Scientific Research Community
Sarah Morrisseau and Sarah Kirn
Pain-free Professional Development
Isabel Morales
A Conversation with Anansi:
Professional Development as Alternate Reality Gaming and Youth Participatory Action Research
Antero Garcia
PLAY! Professional Development Pilot
Vanessa Vartabedian and Laurel Felt
ScratchEd: Developing Support for Educators as Designers
Karen Brennan
Participatory Assessment for Participatory Teaching and Learning in School Contexts
Daniel T. Hickey & Rebecca C. Itow
Design Principles for Participatory Models of Professional Development
Erin Reilly

Future Directions for Research and Development
Rebecca Herr-Stephenson
Conclusion
Henry Jenkins
List of working group members

DESIGNING WITH TEACHERS:
Participatory Approaches to Professional Development in Education
SECTION ONE:
Professional Development
in a Culture of Participatory Learning
Ioana Literat and Rebecca C. Itow
Towards a Theory of Participatory Professional
Development
Ioana Literat

INTRODUCTION : p. 5INTRODUCTION : p. 5
In the contemporary educational landscape, emerging participatory prac-
tices, facilitated by technological and socio-cultural developments, have given
rise to a new model of knowledge circulation. Knowledge is increasingly
distributed among numerous and diverse networks. Individuals now have the
capacity – and the cultural impetus – to become creative producers of infor-
mation and cultural products.
The quickening pace of technological change means we can barely envi-
sion the actual contexts in which our students will use what they are learning
in school. Some of the most important contexts will certainly include digital
networks of user-generated content that is persistent, searchable, and replica-
ble (boyd, 2008). These networks
will feature transactive interac-
tions and shared control (Xenos
& Foot, 2007), and aspects of
what Jenkins et al. (2006) char-
acterize as “participatory culture:”
low barriers to entry, abundant
support for creating and sharing,
informal mentoring of newcom-
ers, and a strong sense of social
connection. Such developments suggest that teachers need to foster “partici-
patory learning” where communities of learners work together to develop
conventional academic knowledge alongside newer networked knowledge.
Participatory learning is most likely to emerge in a culture that honors:
1. Opportunities for exercising creativity by using a variety of media,
tools, and practices;
2. Co-learning, where educators and students pool their skills and knowl-
edge, and share in the tasks of teaching and learning;
3. Heightened motivation and new forms of engagement through mean-
ingful play and experimentation;
4. Learning that feels relevant to the learners’ identities and interests;
5. An integrated learning system - or learning ecosystem - where
connections between home, school, community, and world are enabled
and encouraged.
(Reilly, Vartabedian, Felt, & Jenkins, 2012)
Professional Development in a
Culture of Participatory Learning
By Ioana Literat and Rebecca C. Itow

INTRODUCTION : p. 6
Participatory learning involves exploring information and concepts within a
community of learners who all engage in making and discussing through
inquiry (Greeno, 2006; Papert, 1980). As subjects are explored, learners
share knowledge from all aspects of their lives (Cole & Engeström, 1993;
Duschl & Hamilton, 2010), causing the discussion of concepts to be more
meaningful, tangible, and relevant. Through social and cultural participation,
we learn from each other whether through guided instruction in institutions
that we belong to, informal learning that happens through mentoring, or
through tacit knowledge gained as we appropriate learning and personalize it
for deeper understanding (Rogoff, 1995). The effect of an apprentice’s prior
experiences can be seen in the way she negotiates communication with her
mentor in a given context and then appropriates that knowledge in new situa-
tions.
A participatory learning environment gives learners – in a classroom or else-
where – an opportunity to become part of a community where they can
explore abstract concepts in a non-threatening social context, and then apply
them in situations that hold personal relevance. Learners in a participa-
tory learning system include all members of the learning space – students,
teachers, administrators, and parents. Learning becomes a “negotiation
and collaboration” between these participants (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996,
p. 197), so that different perspectives are valued and respected. Such an
environment is stimulating, forcing each learner to think hard about her state-
ments and the way arguments are formed (Roth & Lee, 2004; Hodson, 1999).
In a participatory learning context, thinking is made visible through networked
technologies; no longer is learning an individual task for the individual mind,
but an exploration within a learning community, which provides a rich, robust
learning experience for all participants.
It is important to clarify, nevertheless, that these technologies and media are
mere tools that facilitate participatory learning and participatory instruction.
This type of pedagogy extends beyond tools and resources, and quintessen-
tially encompasses a respectful, open, non-hierarchic impulse that - beyond
technology - is the true engine of this transformation.
In the same time, we recognize that the rise of digital participation, intercon-
nection, and grassroots creativity has fundamental implications for the realm
of both formal and informal education. Participatory learning, as a pedagogi-
cal model, underscores the urgency of facilitating educational experiences
that help build the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute in today’s
evolving socio-cultural environments, digital and non-digital alike. Unequal
access to these skills and experiences can prevent young people from mean-
ingful social and cultural participation, and put them at a disadvantage in
Professional Development in a Culture
of Participatory Learning
Ioana Literat and Rebecca C. Itow (CONTINUED)

INTRODUCTION : p. 7
terms of their personal and professional pathways (Jenkins et al., 2006). The
participation gap, which Jenkins and colleagues (2006) identify as one of the
three core challenges to participatory culture, goes beyond questions of tech-
nological access; it fundamentally concerns the cultural competencies and
social skills needed for full and meaningful engagement in these new cultural
spaces.
This participation gap, nevertheless, cannot be fully and adequately
addressed if teachers are not afforded these same opportunities to grow and
learn. It is therefore crucial to acknowledge that the participation gap affects
both students and educators, and that professional development for teach-
ers is as essential and as necessary as the participatory learning initiatives
directed at students.
Recent voices from the field of education have aptly called attention to
this need, recommending the establishment of initiatives such as a “Digital
Teacher Corps” that would facilitate a more relevant and innovative imple-
mentation of professional development in schools (Levine & Gee, 2011;
Levine & Wojcicki, 2010). This Digital Teacher Corps would be modeled after
Teach for America to address the need for improved digital literacy. Accord-
ing to this vision, young teachers who are already fluent in technology would
receive additional training in participatory pedagogies and then be dispatched
as “literacy evangelists” (Levine & Gee, 2011) to low-performing schools in
rural and urban communities.
Thus, these teachers “would support evidence-based scaling of effective
literacy instruction using the most modern and personalized digital literacy
tools available” (p. 2). While the teachers in the Digital Teacher Corps are
primarily responsible for addressing students’ needs through their instruction,
another anticipated outcome is that they could affect the culture of the school
and encourage other teachers to use digital tools for literacy instruction.
Furthermore, in addition to teachers, the Corps would also engage commu-
nity literacy mentors, such as librarians and cultural professionals, in an effort
to build a multigenerational campaign to address the national literacy crisis
(Levine & Gee, 2011).

INTRODUCTION : p. 8
As digital media plays an increasingly significant role in our youth’s lives,
it is crucial that these young people have the necessary adult support that
enables them to live healthy, meaningful experiences, both online and offline
(Davis, Katz, Santo, & James, 2010). Teachers play a monumental role in
facilitating opportunities for students to become critical thinkers, proactive
citizens, and creative contributors to the world around them. They deserve to
have access to the most relevant, meaningful and empowering professional
development opportunities, and it is our hope that the current collection of
case studies will help seed this critical conversation.

INTRODUCTION : p. 9
Collaborative Solutions in the PD Field: The Genisis and
Goals of This Working Group
The idea of establishing a working group on participatory models of
professional development grew out of discussions that occurred during the
Digital Media and Learning Conference 2011. The aim of this working group
was to bring together those who are designing, developing and implement-
ing initiatives to support teachers in understanding the affordances of digital
media in learning, and to engage in a much-needed dialogue on culturally
relevant professional development. We believe that, in order to generate
effective models of participatory professional development, an engaged
collaboration is needed between multiple stakeholders who bring a diverse
set of ideas and challenges to the conversation. Our group is, thus, a mixture
of researchers, teachers and school administrators from a variety of disci-
plines, schools, and states. Instead of working in silos on the same issue,
coming together as a collaborative has led to a productive and important
discussion of how to scale and sustain successful models of 21st century
professional development in education.
The Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council
A formative influence on the Professional Development working group is
the Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council first convened by the Joan
Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop in January 2010. The Council,
comprised of experts in early childhood education and child develop-
ment, educational policymakers, and technologists, worked together to
identify necessary changes in teacher training and professional develop-
ment within the context of 21st century schooling.
Towards a Theory of Participatory
By Ioana Literat

INTRODUCTION : p. 10INTRODUCTION : p. 10
Through its collaborative work, the Council put forward several recom-
mendations for educational policy and program design that better support
the integration of digital technologies and participatory learning prac-
tices into educational settings for children from three to eight years old.
Specifically, the DATPC highlighted five general goals for improvement
and innovation related to training and support of early childhood and
elementary teachers:
Goal 1: Modernize program designs and professional development
models to promote success. Of primary importance to meeting this
goal is helping teachers and students gain meaningful access to new tech-
nologies. In addition, the Council recommended changes to staffing,
scheduling, and communication practices to create space and time for
collaboration and intentional learning, as well as increased opportunities
for parental involvement.
Goal 2: Train early educators to integrate digital and screen media
into their teaching practices in developmentally appropriate ways.
Following the lead of the National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC), the Council’s recommendation in this area focused
on empowering teachers to make choices about the kinds of media to use
in their classrooms, recognizing teachers’ expertise in principles of devel-
opmentally appropriate practice.
Goal 3: Expand public media use as a cost-effective asset for teach-
ers. This goal focused on raising awareness among teachers of the catalog
of media available for use in the classroom through public channels and
supporting design and production of public media across new platforms.
Goal 4: Advance coherent and equitable policies to promote technol-
ogy integration across standards, curriculum, and teacher professional
development. Acknowledging the ongoing, dual challenges of the digital
divide and the participation gap, the Council recommended restructuring
the allocation of funds and resources to ensure a more equitable distribu-
tion of new technologies.
Goal 5: Create R&D partnerships for a digital age. Also related to
improving equity in the distribution of technologies and funds for profes-
sional development, the Council recommended creative, interdisciplinary
approaches to R&D.
(Barron, Cayton-Hodges, Bofferding, Copple, Darling-Hammond, and
Levine, 2011).
These broad goals outlined by the Council have been addressed by a variety
of programs for students throughout K-12 schooling and expanded learn-
ing opportunities.

INTRODUCTION : p. 11
The principal goals of this working group were to:
• Provide a common forum for professional development conversations
centered around participatory learning
• Foster interdisciplinary dialogue among vested audiences in participatory
learning
• Identify synergy among members and facilitate learning from each other
• Construct a common framework for participatory models of professional
development
• Extract best practices and lingering challenges in the field
• Build a collection of case studies exemplifying these best practices and
share them with the larger community of stakeholders in participatory
learning
Our collective experiences in the realm of professional development and our
dialogues within the context of this working group led to the identification and
explication of four core values that we consider key to effective participa-
tory PD programs. We believe that these four values, along with the design
principles that they inform in practice, are an essential take-away from this
multi-stakeholder conversation.
Thus, in our view, the values that shape the design of participatory PD are:
1. Participation, not indoctrination
There is a critical need, in the field of education, to transition from
professional development for teachers to professional development
with teachers. Participatory learning relies on a model of “distributed
expertise”, which assumes that knowledge, including in an educational
context, is distributed across a diffuse network of people and tools. We
believe that professional development for teachers should similarly be
conceived and implemented in a non-hierarchical, inclusive and partic-
ipatory manner, thus modeling the type of dynamic pedagogy that
characterizes participatory learning.
2. Exploration, not prescription
In order to inspire this sense of ownership and co-design in the
participants, PD initiatives must allow ample room for personal and
professional exploration. Attention must also be paid to what teach-
By Ioana Literat (CONTINUED)

ers want from a professional development experience, rather than just
what is required of them. By allowing teachers to explore who they are
and what their professional goals are, the PD program can provide
educators with an opportunity to connect to the content and to display
their own individuality in the process.
3. Contextualization, not abstraction
PD programs should be tailored to the specific questions and particu-
lar career goals of the participants. We acknowledge the tension
between the desire to create scalable and flexible initiatives, and
the need to cater most effectively to specific disciplines and levels
of instruction; this challenge is all the more acute when it comes to
sharing strategies for integrating media and digital technologies into
the classroom. However, we believe that there is a way to reconcile
this tension. By addressing the common core standards teachers need
to fulfill, while in the same time accounting for the various disciplines
and grade levels, program designers can craft versatile PD initiatives
that represent – and feel like – a genuine investment in professional
growth.
4. Iteration, not repetition
In order to sustain ongoing learning, the design of successful PD
programs must provide opportunities for constant improvement, trou-
bleshooting, and evaluation. In this sense, assessment emerges as
a problematic yet nevertheless vital topic in the realm of professional
development implementation. We hope that assessment practices in
professional development will increasingly mirror the participatory shift
in program design and reflection.
These values offer a blueprint for an innovative type of professional devel-
opment. By incorporating these values into the design of professional
development programs, researchers and practitioners can efficiently craft
initiatives that are participatory, non-hierarchical, personally and profession-
ally meaningful, relevant, flexible and sustainable.

The Case Studies: Participatory Models of Professional
Development
The present collection of case studies – the culmination of the activities of
this working group – addresses these crucial questions, and introduces a
diverse set of participatory professional development experiences from the
field. The case studies are multimedia-rich, project-based articles from a
variety of disciplinary, geographical and cultural contexts, shedding light onto
the eclectic applications of professional development initiatives.
The collection begins with Sarah Morrisseau and Sarah Kirn describing and
analyzing the PD elements of Vital Signs, an exemplary program for science
education in Maine. The authors note that the process of involving students
in such a hands-on, authentic science learning environment demands a
different way of teaching than many educators are used to; their PD efforts,
therefore, are expertly crafted to facilitate the educators’ professional growth
and to sustainably enable the implementation of Vital Signs both inside and
outside of the classroom.
Next, Isabel Morales, a talented and passionate LAUSD teacher, provides
us with a personal perspective on how PD programs should be designed
in order to maximize teacher buy-in and to enhance the opportunities for
personal and professional enhancement. Drawing on examples from her own
PD experiences and lesson plans, Isabel discusses participation, relevance
and sustainability in the context of such opportunities.
Antero Garcia explores the intersections between participatory PD, game-
based storytelling and youth participatory action research (YPAR), in the
context of the alternative reality game that he developed: “Ask Anansi”,
Antero invites us into the magical world of the spider Anansi, who explains
how cross-generational collaboration and transformative social play can
inform the craft of pedagogy and teacher PD.
Vanessa Vartabedian and Laurel Felt outline the principles behind the PD
initiatives of PLAY! (Participatory Learning and You!), and the practical
implementation of two such efforts: the Summer Sandbox and, respectively,
PLAYing Outside the Box. Vanessa and Laurel identify “play” – an exploratory
form of problem-solving – as a fundamental feature of successful PD efforts,
allowing educators to engage in hands-on, participatory learning and self-
enhancement.
Karen Brennan, drawing on her extensive work on the educational program-
ming environment Scratch, discusses the design and implementation of

ScratchEd teacher resources. These resources allow teachers to facilitate
young people’s development as creators of interactive media, and engage
them in what Karen identifies as the four core activities of designing, person-
alizing, sharing, and reflecting.
Finally, Dan Hickey and Rebecca Itow describe current and future efforts to
help teachers embrace participatory approaches to learning. They discuss
an ongoing collaboration between assessment researchers, curriculum
developers, and high school English teachers. Situated learning, connectiv-
ist instruction, participatory assessment, and design-based research were
central to this collaboration; Dan and Rebecca suggest that these are essen-
tial elements of any effort to expand participatory learning.
Both read separately and in conversation with each other, these case studies
exemplify a participatory approach to professional development in education,
illuminating some of the promises as well as the challenges of this new mode
of professional enhancement. It is our hope that the efforts of this working
group will facilitate a better understanding of participatory professional devel-
opment, contribute to this much-needed conversation within the digital media
and learning field, and enable a wider and more diverse implementation of
successful professional development programs in the years to come.

SECTION TWO:
Vital Signs: Designing for Student and Teacher
Participation in a Scientific Research Community
Pain-free Professional Development
Isabel Morales
Professional Development as Alternate Reality
Gaming and Youth Participatory Action Research
Antero Garcia
ScratchEd:
Developing Support for Educators as Designers
Karen Brennan
Participatory Assessment for Participatory
Teaching and Learning in School Contexts
Daniel T. Hickey & Rebecca C. Itow

CASE STUDIES : p. 16
VITAL SIGNS
The Vital Signs community and corresponding professional development
initiative is at the forefront of a transformation in how students are learning
science in the state of Maine. Students are participating (VIDEO 1) in learning
environments that reflect the collaborative, social, generative nature of scien-
tific practice. They are doing real research and are making real contributions
to a growing community of scientists, citizen scientists, and peers. They are
asking questions, working together, making evidence-based arguments, and
driving their own learning. Professional development experiences (VIDEO 2)
motivate and equip educators to build these authentic learning environments
and to take full advantage of an online community of practice.
VIDEO 1: Students contribute to a real research effort, interact online with with scientists and
peers in the Vital Signs community - http://vitalsignsme.org/2012-vs-community-video
Vital Signs: Designing for student
and teacher participation in a scientific
research community

VIDEO 2: A summary of the key elements of Vital Signs professional development experiences
- http://vitalsignsme.org/2012-vs-professional-development-video
Vital Signs (VS) is one piece in a suite of innovative science education
programs at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) (VIDEO 3) that are
designed to engage students with science, and help them become critical
thinkers, problem-solvers, collaborators, and effective communicators. These
education programs function within the broader context of GMRI’s efforts to
build an enduring relationship with the Gulf of Maine bioregion, focused on
a healthy and well-understood ecosystem, sustainable industries, vibrant
communities, abundant opportunities, and inspired citizens.communities, abundant opportunities, and inspired citizens.
VIDEO 3: Learn more about the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s education initiatives and
impact through the lens of former Maine Governor Angus King - http://www.gmri.org/ar2008/
voices_angus.html
Vital Signs: Designing for student and teacher participation
in a scientific research community
Sarah Morrisseau and Sarah Kirn (CONTINUED)

PARTICIPATING IN A COMMUNITY OF STUDENTS, EDUCATORS, SCIEN-
TISTS, AND CITIZEN SCIENTISTS
“Like no other program, Vital Signs creates a collaborative foundation for
students, scientists and resource managers to respond rapidly to new envi-
ronmental threats to Maine while providing essential experience to the next
generation of its citizen scientists.” Paul Gregory, Environmental Specialist,
Maine Department of Environmental Protection, 2009
Vital Signs is an online community of students, educators, scientists, and
citizen scientists focused on the study of native and invasive species in
Maine. Participants use online tools to map and share the species observa-
tions they make in their local ecosystems. They make meaning of their data
in the context of the larger Vital Signs database of species observations, and
then use the photo evidence and videos they collect in the field to create
media-rich projects (VIDEO 4) that communicate their conclusions.
VIDEO 4: This video was produced by a team of students at Dedham Middle School in Dedham,
Maine in an effort to communicate to their School Board that they prefer learning science by
doing fieldwork and contributing to a real research effort. - http://vitalsignsme.org/dedham-
looks-didymo

Species experts and science professionals engage online to check students’
species identifications and evidence, mentor novices, share stories, and
recruit participants to collect data specific to their research. This growing
database of rigorous species and habitat data is being used by organiza-
tions like the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Maine Forest
Service, and the national Early Detection and Distribution Mapping System
(EDDMapS).
“My classes have a real purpose. We’re on a mission to seek out invasive
species on campus and in our communities, monitor these species, and
identify the native species on our campus that may be impacted. We have
the encouragement of scientists and others who comment on and use our
findings. Kids are excited about science class, and so am I.” Patrick Parent,
Grade 7 Science Teacher, Massabesic Middle School, VS participant since
2009
Involving students in this kind of authentic science learning environment
demands a different way of teaching than many educators are used to
(National Research Council, 2008). In order for students to participate produc-
tively in this science learning environment, the three-person Vital Signs team
(VS team) designs various in-person and online professional development
(PD) experiences to scaffold and support Vital Signs’ implementation in class-
rooms and in out-of school settings.
INITIAL PROGRAM DESIGN WITH EDUCATORS
“It was awesome to be part of this development process, and to have played
even a small part in making this project a reality for students and educators
across the state.” Mike Denniston, Grade 7 Science Teacher, Middle School
of the Kennebunks, VS advisor and participant since 2008
Vital Signs educator institutes launched in 2008 with 13 middle school educa-
tors engaged as collaborators in designing and testing the first Vital Signs
website, curriculum, and field protocols. It was an intense and exciting year of
meetings, site visits to observe Vital Signs prototypes in action, reflection, and
iteration alongside a team of inspired educators and their students.
The first institute engaged this group in a series of online and off-line learn-
ing experiences that were the VS team’s best guesses at what might excite
students, engage them in rigorous science learning, and connect them in
meaningful ways with the scientists who wanted their data.

Educators assumed a student role during each experience. Using a mix of
playful reflection and assessment processes, the VS team captured educa-
tors’ reactions, reflections, ideas, and feedback to inform the next iteration
of curriculum, field protocols and resources, and the ultimate design of the
online learning environment. The VS team challenged educators to remix their
institute activities into ones that would work for their own students, and to
experiment and let the VS team know the results.
Educators readily invited the VS team into their classrooms to observe their
unique implementations of Vital Signs, and were eager for their students to
try out the earliest versions of the online platform. The VS team was pleased
to see and hear that none were implementing Vital Signs in exactly the same
way, proving it flexible enough to support educators’ and students’ diverse
interests and learning goals. Educators felt challenged by the nature of Vital
Signs to teach differently and were energized by their students’ positive
response. Educators ended the year feeling they had a more powerful way to
teach science content, skills, and practices.
While subsequent PD experiences have focused on the implementation and
evolution of an existing resource rather than on creating one from scratch,
they have maintained the collaborative, participatory spirit of this initial insti-
tute that proved so successful for educators and for the larger Vital Signs
community.
KEY ELEMENTS OF VITAL SIGNS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The VS team’s experience designing PD for educators suggests that success-
ful PD is born of ongoing conversations and shared experiences among
educators and program providers, and that it must be embedded within the
national conversation around research, standards, and evolving needs.
The VS team considers the following six elements essential to the design of
effective PD:
1. Model a participatory learning environment
“I can imagine turning what I experienced today into exciting learning
experiences for students. Just like we did, I imagine students in all parts
of the watershed exploring the lake environments, and then working
together with the community to identify new infestations and prevent their
spread.” Maggie Shannon, Executive Director, Maine Congress of Lake
Associations, VS participant since 2011

The Vital Signs learning environment and related PD experiences exemplify
aspects of participatory culture and participatory learning as defined by Henry
Jenkins (2006) and James Bosco (2010), respectively. These include:
• Low barriers to participation, specifically educators’ participation in
institutes, workshops, and webinars
• Causing purposeful interaction and mentorship among experts and
novices
• Allowing individuals and groups to pursue and direct their own learn-
ing agendas
• Encouraging participants to construct new knowledge through their
engagement with others
• Enabling the production and sharing of data, resources, and creative
products of use to others
• Creating a unified environment that connects learning inside and
outside of school.
Many of the educators who sign on to Vital Signs are initially unfamiliar with
teaching practices that support science learning that is outside, online, and
connected to a community of practice. Educators must facilitate teamwork
and communication, foster evidence-based reasoning, encourage play, and
embrace the messiness of scientific practice. To help educators make these
practices familiar, and to help them imagine their students learning science
differently, the VS team models for them the learning environment they hope
educators will create for their students. Educators are active participants
in institutes. They learn by doing, experiencing, contributing, and playing in
ways that translate directly into classroom practice.
“Investigations that support student learning require educators who under-
stand how scientific problems evolve, and educators themselves need to
have first-hand experiences akin to those they create for their students.
Educators must have these experiences, building their knowledge and
comfort with science practice in order to create an effective environment
for student learning” National Research Council, 2008
During institutes, educators assume a student role, and experience the
hands-on classroom, field, and online components of Vital Signs. Activities
include playing collaborative invasive species games, building investigation
and analysis skills, completing Field Missions together, having evidence-
based discussions about data, creating products to share, and engaging in
online conversations with the Vital Signs community. The VS team models
the role of the teacher, employing the best instructional practices that facili-
tate and guide active, student-directed learning. Practices include motivating
and celebrating curiosity, creativity, and sharing, encouraging educators to

rely on the group’s collective expertise to answer questions, and prompting
them to reflect on the value of their own learning experience during the insti-
tute. Educators see firsthand how to guide learning in an environment where
work is active, social, and collaborative, conversations are evidence-based,
and results have meaning beyond the classroom.
2. Support and sustain relationships long-term
“Unlike past research I’ve done with students, this Vital Signs work is
really well supported – it doesn’t look like it’s going away.” Patricia Bern-
hardt, Grade 7 Science Teacher, James Doughty Middle School, VS
participant since 2009
For educators, changing practice and incorporating new content takes time
and ongoing support. The VS team tries to ease the transition by:
• Equipping and familiarizing educators with the online tools, field equip-
ment (cameras, GPS, quadrats, more!), and curriculum resources
they need in order to implement Vital Signs with students
• Supporting educators in collaborating with one another to draft individ-
ual Action Plans that detail how they will incorporate Vital Signs into
their curriculum.
• Following in-person introductory institutes with webinar series or
advanced institutes to refresh and deepen practice. Many educators
attend multiple Vital Signs PD offerings.
• Encouraging and being responsive to educators’ questions at all
hours, and offering ongoing, personalized support to those who need
it. The relationships built during the PD process extended far beyond
the institute, workshop, or webinar.
The practices that the VS team models and the content they hope educators
will implement are research-based and standards-aligned. This empowers
those educators who need to justify implementing Vital Signs to colleagues
and administrators. Currently, the VS team relies on the motivation and
passion of individual educators to implement Vital Signs. Going forward, they
plan to include administrators and school boards in the Vital Signs commu-
nity to ensure institutional, long-term commitment for implementation of Vital
Signs.
3. Build community
“You don’t understand… I’ve been teaching for 30 years and never expe-
rienced anything like this! It’s so refreshing and energizing and helpful to
have an ongoing, online connection to educators in Maine who – like me
– are motivated and who want their students to learn science this way.”
Anonymous survey response, Introductory Teacher Institute 2010

The focus of Vital Signs PD is as much about building communities of educa-
tors who learn together and support one another as it is about gaining comfort
with the tools and curriculum. It’s not only about the website or the curriculum
offered, but also about the community that is created, how the group frames
and builds a context for learning, the collaborative nature of the conversation,
and how the group experiments and plays with ideas together. Providing a set
of shared experiences seems to establish a foundation of community among
educators that can be reinforced through future online and in-person engage-
ment with Vital Signs.
Institutes begin with the group generating explicit community norms, estab-
lishing a collegial tone that encourages educators to share their expertise
and passion, take personal and professional risks, talk through challenges,
and inspire one another. This is especially important in an environment where
many educators are pushed out of their comfort zones, and where their
content and technology knowledge and established teaching practices may
be challenged.
The intent is for this professional community to continue sharing, support-
ing, and feeding itself long after an institute, workshop, or webinar is over.
Educators upload their own curriculum resources and assessment tools,
leave comments to share how they modified activities, post their questions
and implementation trials and triumphs to forums, and comment on the proj-
ects and observations published by other educators’ students. Evidence that
educators find value in this statewide community of like-minded, motivated
educators includes:
• Educators actively recruit colleagues from in-district and out to join the
community
• Experienced Vital Signs educators volunteer as online mentors to
those who are just starting
• Educators across the state team up to do investigations and compari-
son studies
• Educators seek out the expertise of students who have published
projects that they want their students to do
• Educators and students build local communities around their Vital
Signs research efforts:
“Next year this same group of kids will be very adept at doing obser-
vations and will be able to teach a community lake-monitoring group
how to do this along with us.” Rhonda Tate, Dedham Elementary
School, VS participant since 2011
The VS team encourages educators to build this type of learning community
among students in their own classrooms to foster the productive commu-
nication and collaboration central to scientific practice and discourse. “The

most productive classroom environments, in all subject areas, are those
that are enriched by talk and argument. It can lead to a deeper engagement
with the content under discussion, eliciting surprisingly complex and subject
matter-specific reasoning by students who might not ordinarily be considered
academically successful” (National Research Council, 2008).
4. Deepen the conversation with pre-institute assignments
“The completion of the pre-institute work was an empowering and posi-
tive experience for educators. The opportunity to succeed, or to come to
the institute with specific questions, facilitated their engagement.” Sasha
Palmquist, Vital Signs Case Study Analysis, Institute for Learning Innova-
tion, 2011
The website and fieldwork protocols were designed to be used by anyone
without any prior scientific training. However, educators in the earliest insti-
tutes needed more orientation to the online tools than was anticipated. An
experiment with pre-institute assignments in 2010 changed this. It let us
instantly deepen the conversation from how the tools work to how the tools
enable learning. It let experts and mentor relationships emerge naturally. It
encouraged participants to drive the conversation towards components about
which they were most curious or unsure.
The VS team now sends enrolled educators a How-To Guide, and asks them
to do an investigation and put their data on the website before coming to the
institute. Educators are encouraged to get as far as they can and note which
parts are frustrating and where, if anywhere, they get stuck. The result is a
roomful of empowered educators who have either complete or partial success
with the Vital Signs field protocols and data entry process. They come to the
institute familiar with the website, having navigated to find the resources they
needed to do their investigation. They are proud and eager to show off the
species observations they published or full of questions about where they got
stuck. They are ready to help and be helped by colleagues. They share tricks
and stories.
A favorite story is that of Rhonda from Dedham Elementary School, who
confessed to “cheating” and having her students do her institute homework
for her. She handed them the guide,
took them out into a foot of new snow
looking for hemlock trees, and let them
work through the data collection and
online entry themselves. Hearing Rhon-
da’s story at the institute, others thought
they might let their students figure it
out themselves too, and embrace the
student-driven nature of Vital Signs from
the very beginning.

Pre- and post-institute assignments have since addressed commenting,
posting to forums, and joining forces with colleagues in separate parts of the
state to compare and make meaning of data. Knowing where educators are
uncomfortable or where they get frustrated with various site components has
informed the VS team’s resource development, website refinements, and PD
offerings.
5. Stay relevant to the education landscape in Maine
“GMRI has made it their business to work collaboratively with the Depart-
ment of Education to understand, reflect on, and develop valuable
science inquiry programming for students and professional development
for educators. They are a model for the type of collaboration required to
educate and graduate a scientifically literate generation.” Anita Bernhardt,
Science and Technology Specialist, Maine Department of Education,
2009
Critical to the success of Vital Signs PD is an intimate understanding of the
present education landscape in Maine, and an awareness of the opportunities
and challenges facing educators. GMRI’s involvement in state policy conver-
sations and relationships built with classroom teachers and state education
leaders make Vital Signs especially relevant to Maine educators.
The VS team makes sure that the learning activities and units they write help
educators meet state and national standards in new, more engaging ways,
and that the instructional practices modeled during institutes align with the
research on how students best learn science as reported in the National
Research Council’s reports Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching
Science in Grades K-8 and Ready, Set, Science: Putting Research to Work in
K-8 Classrooms.
Secondly, the VS team makes sure educators understand how the standards-
aligned Vital Signs curriculum can help them reach the learning goals they
have for their students. They help educators understand that Vital Signs can
be a more engaging and therefore effective way to teach required standards,
not an add-on to an already tight curriculum.
“The goal and challenge of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative’s
1:1 laptop program has been to engage students in ‘meaningful work.’ By
connecting middle school classrooms with Vital Signs’ active research,
educators can now accomplish this goal with style.” Jeff Mao, Learning
Technology Policy Director, Maine Department of Education, 2009

The online nature of Vital Signs
requires that educators have some
familiarity with media and online
tools, such that they are comfort-
able mediating online experiences for
their tech savvy students. Maine’s 1:1
laptop initiative puts a laptop computer
in the hands of all 7th and 8th grade
students and educators in the state.
Many districts have extended this infra-
structure into high schools. All schools
and libraries in the state have high speed Internet access. Because of this
initiative, most educators who participate in Vital Signs PD are familiar with
basic computer functions and getting online. Comfort levels quickly decline,
however, when educators are asked to post public comments, upload photos,
use online maps and visualization tools, or create videos (VIDEO 5) and
other digital projects. Most are open to learning because they see the value
in having their students use digital technologies and media to interact and
communicate.
VIDEO 5: This public service announcement video was made at a summer institute in
2011 by three informal science educators during a 40-minute project challenge -
http://vitalsignsme.org/vital-signs-tools-trade
able mediating online experiences for
Maine’s 1:1
puts a laptop computer
in the hands of all 7th and 8th grade
students and educators in the state.
Many districts have extended this infra-
structure into high schools. All schools

6. Participate in state and national conversations on the future of teaching
and learning
“I felt inspired. Vital Signs and Ready, Set, Science! confirmed for me
what science teaching ought to be. For once in my career, I am ahead of
the game.” Anonymous survey response, Introductory Teacher Institute
2010
To ensure that PD experiences prepare educators for teaching and learning in
the 21st Century, GMRI seeks out and participates in key state and national
conversations influencing the future of science education. With education
leaders in the state, GMRI is forwarding the idea of developing a common
framework, language, and research base for all science-related PD happen-
ing in Maine. Research has found that educators need 80 or more hours of
extended PD to change their teaching practice, but few providers can deliver
this depth of training (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009). Following the lead of
Anita Bernhardt, Maine Department of Education’s Science and Technology
Specialist, we have aligned our PD to the best practices of science education
presented in the National Research Council’s Ready, Set, Science! The logic
behind using Ready, Set, Science! as a common framework is that if all PD in
science uses common language and ideas, this will allow educators to derive
cumulative benefit from PD offerings from diverse providers.
GMRI is also participating on the Maine Science Leadership Team, a group
selected to review the draft Next Generation Science Standards being devel-
oped from the National Academies of Sciences’ publication A Framework for
K-12 Science Education. There is strong alignment between the teaching
practices demanded by participation in Vital Signs and the changes called for
by the Framework, particularly the new integration of science and engineering
practices in addition to content. The Framework explicitly calls for significant
new PD to support educators shifting their approach to teaching science.
Being part of this conversation about evolving PD lets the VS team anticipate
change and thoughtfully shift their own practice and curriculum to better serve
educators long-term.
ASSESSING AND EVOLVING VITAL SIGNS
Inherent in the Vital Signs PD design process is a continuous cycle of
experimentation, reflection, iteration, and evolution rooted in research and
experience. No two institutes, workshops, or webinars are the same. During
institutes, the VS team listens carefully to conversations, observes behav-
ior and body language, and builds in feedback and reflection mechanisms to
gauge the effectiveness of an experience and to get ideas from educators for
how to improve their approach. The team works to correlate specific institutes
with the subsequent needs and successes of educators and their students,

including what educators do and do not need follow-up support to implement,
input from email conversations, and the quality and nature of the species
observations, comments, and projects students publish to the website. The
result has been an invaluable series of experiments, and an ongoing dialogue
with educators that continues to improve PD, website functionality, curriculum,
and online resources. Experiments include:
• Introductory institutes with follow-on webinar series that are designed to
grow the Vital Signs educator community and to immerse formal and out-of-
school educators in basic scientific practice, online data sharing, and best
instructional practices.
• Curriculum-centered institutes that bring together teams of educators, and
vertical, multi-grade science educators from the same school districts to inte-
grate Vital Signs content, skills, and practices across subjects and grades.
• Institutes for out-of-school educators that focus on the challenges and
opportunities of doing Vital Signs with students in afterschool programs,
recreation programs, summer camps, and other out-of-school learning envi-
ronments.
• Advanced institutes that invite educators to do more with data analysis and
meaning making, engage more deeply in online communication with experts
and peers, and turn results into creative, media rich projects to share online.
• Community-based workshops (VIDEO 6) that involve educators, scientists,
and citizen scientists from one local community. A subset of each community
co-designs and co-delivers institutes and data collection experiences custom-
ized to their unique needs and desired use of Vital Signs tools.
• Institutes that involve Educator Leaders in the delivery of an Introductory
Institute alongside the VS team. After seeing a number of educator mentors
emerge organically, the VS team is experimenting with incentivizing and
empowering a cohort of exemplary Vital Signs educators who will help grow,
sustain, and evolve the Vital Signs learning environment in both formal and
out-of-school learning environments.
• Institutes led by Educator Leaders that challenge a small team of leaders
to work together – with little input from the VS team – to design and deliver
multi-day courses that share their own firsthand experiences with Vital Signs.

VIDEO 6: This video blog post summarizes the experiences of college students, college faculty,
educators, and watershed group leaders during a community-based workshop in 2011 - http://
vitalsignsme.org/belgrade-workshop-video-blog
To further refine PD experiences, the VS team checks with educators after
institutes to learn how they implement Vital Signs with their students. Despite
best efforts to show how customizable the experience is, educators imple-
menting Vital Signs for the first time tend to do it exactly as they experienced
it during an institute. It is not until their second or third time through that they
make it their own. Knowing that a PD experience can translate very liter-
ally to classroom practice has given us the ability to indirectly shift students’
Vital Signs experiences statewide. Most recently, the VS team emphasized
the importance of online conversation and caused a noticeable increase in
students commenting on others’ species observations and engaging with
experts online. They have similarly improved data quality and data analysis
with institute tweaks.
The VS team pays particular attention to what educators remember and value
months or even years following a PD experience. Their answers are often
markedly different than what was noted on pre-institute surveys. Mention of
contact hours for recertification, new curriculum resources, and field equip-
ment is replaced by renewed confidence in their own teaching practice, an
appreciation of Vital Signs’ educator and scientific communities, satisfaction
in how their students are now learning science, and the importance of a well-
supported program.

“I ended this year feeling that my students did some real science. I may not
have gotten to all the content or vocabulary, but this is one of the first years
in all my years of teaching that I felt like the kids really got their money’s
worth. I know they enjoyed going outside and all, but many, even some less
gifted students really became student scientists. They enjoyed the questions,
collecting evidence, figuring things out, right or wrong, and learned a lot in the
process. I think several students enjoyed being a scientist so much that there
is no turning back for them now. I know that just about all of them will look at
the world differently from now on. I know I do.” Patrick Parent, Massabesic
Middle School, VS participant since 2009
Conclusion
The Vital Signs PD experiences will continue to evolve as participation in the
community grows and deepens. We imagine that the key elements detailed
above – that first emerged as Vital Signs was co-developed with educators in
2008 and that have served the community so well since – will endure in future
iterations:
• Letting educators experience a participatory learning environment, and
modeling for them the best instructional practices that enable hands-on,
authentic science learning
• Building community and supporting educators’ participation long-term through
personal connections and institutional support
• Setting educators up to deepen, personalize, and shift conversations to meet
their own professional goals
• Staying relevant to the changing education landscape in Maine, including
standards, systemic changes, and legislation
• Participating in and shaping Vital Signs in response to conversations about
the future of science teaching and learning
• Assessing and iterating quickly and thoughtfully in response to new needs,
challenges, and opportunities
While these elements have proven exciting and effective for the Vital Signs
community, we imagine they can be applied with similar success across disci-
plines and in other professional development contexts.

Acknowledgements:
We would like the thank Christine Voyer for her help with the Vital Signs
videos, and Alan Lishness and Jill Harlow for their helpful reviews of this case
study.
Sarah Morrisseau joined GMRI’s education team in 2005. Her focus is on
the evolution of the Vital Signs online learning environment, the design and
implementation of professional development experiences for educators, and
the development of curriculum, resources, and experiences that support a
growing, changing community. Sarah has a background in both research
science and science education. She shares GMRI’s commitment to integrat-
ing the two disciplines in meaningful ways to create authentic, connected
science learning experiences.
Sarah Kirn has been the Vital Signs program manager at the Gulf of Maine
Research Institute since 2002. Kirn believes that every student deserves
exciting experiences with science that let him or her develop rather than lose
their natural curiosity. She has overseen the evolution of Vital Signs from
its start as a Palm-based pilot in six schools to its current incarnation as a
web-based platform serving thousands of students, hundreds of educators,
and dozens of scientists. Her credentials include a B.Sc. degree in geology-
biology from Brown University, and a M.Sc. degree in oceanography from the
University of Maine where she held a NSF GK-12 Teaching Fellowship.

Professional development opportunities for teachers have the potential
to be inspiring and instructive. Unfortunately, many administrators succumb
to the latest educational fads when selecting professional development
programs. Teachers often approach this type of PD with skepticism, ques-
tioning the legitimacy of the so-called educational experts presenting their
latest silver bullet solution. Educators may be hesitant to invest themselves
in pre-packaged professional development, because they have seen many
programs be adopted one year, only to be abandoned for the next popular
trend in education. Luckily, not all professional development is painful; inno-
vative scholars and professionals are taking it upon themselves to create
participatory, relevant experiences that provide teachers with skills and
support to reflect on and refine their craft.
When participating in professional development, teachers respond to
programs that establish legitimacy, demonstrate relevance and applicability,
and provide ongoing support. This summer, I had the opportunity to partici-
pate in two such opportunities: PLAY! (Participatory Learning and You!) and
California on my Honor. Both programs provided valuable resources and
support, treated teachers as competent professionals, and were structured in
a way that allowed for teachers to apply their learning and share their work
with one another throughout an entire semester. Furthermore, as a result of
my participation in these programs, I developed professional relationships
with educators at other schools, who continue to inspire me with their creative
ideas and positive energy.
The Summer Sandbox, a week-long professional development program
hosted by USC Annenberg Innovation Lab’s PLAY!, was an exciting oppor-
tunity to work alongside researchers, teachers, and students to develop
participatory learning environments in the classroom. This was a professional
development unlike any other: we did not sit passively in our chairs, while one
person presented information to us; instead, we were active participants and
co-creators of the experience. PLAY! brought together teachers with similar
passions and interests, who were then able to share ideas and resources with
one another. My colleagues taught me, for instance, how to use Dropbox and
music videos on Youtube to find supplemental classroom resources. I taught
them how to find grants and free travel opportunities on the internet. The
workshop facilitators acknowledged that the teacher participants were profes-
sionals with useful knowledge and experiences to offer, and encouraged us to
collaborate and create new learning opportunities.
The Summer Sandbox reminded teachers of the importance of revitalizing our
teaching by infusing elements of play and collaboration into our curriculum.
We learned by playing, and by participating in various activities that promoted
thought-provoking discussion in creative and innovative ways. Once, we were
Pain-Free Professional Development
Isabel Morales

asked to bring a tool and a toy to the workshop, and were placed in groups
with the only instructions being “find a way that you would use these objects
in your teaching.” Initially, my group stared at our objects in utter confusion,
wondering how we could integrate seemingly random items such as men’s
suspenders, a bell, and a framed
piece of sand art into a class-
room lesson. The exercise forced
us to think in an entirely differ-
ent way, and eventually led to a
deep conversation about how each
of these items could be used to
discuss the strength, influence, and
fragility of democracy. My favorite
activity was entirely hands-on, and it required us to reimagine our classrooms
as a participatory learning space. With the help of my group, I was able to
move my classroom furniture around to break away from a traditional class-
room setup and create a more vibrant, inviting, and engaging space. The fact
that this professional development opportunity provided teachers with activi-
ties that were applicable and relevant to our classroom contexts made this an
extremely valuable and unique experience.
PLAY! was flexible, and allowed each teacher to voluntarily continue partici-
pating and exploring other interests. Summer Sandbox introduced me to a
new way of conceptualizing my job as a teacher, and I chose to continue
working with PLAY! throughout the semester, participating in workshops that
taught me how to embrace animation, video, and
mapping technology as learning tools. I learned
to incorporate the technology that students love –
cell phones, cameras, video and audio recorders,
Twitter, Facebook, and blogs – into the curricu-
lum. During a unit on civic participation, students
visited wearethe99.tumblr.com and created their
own protest statements, taking pictures of them-
selves and posting them to the online Playground
platform. As part of this instructional unit, we went
on a field trip to City Hall and the Occupy LA
encampment, where students were encouraged to
record interviews with protesters and tweet their
experiences. This proved to be an engaging and memorable learning experi-
ences for the students, and in projects that they completed six months later,
the themes and course content that they had previously explored continued
to emerge. By participating in this professional development throughout the
semester, I received ongoing support, in the form of one-on-one coaching and
monthly workshops, which stands in direct contrast to the more short-term
Isabel Morales (CONTINUED)
deep conversation about how each
discuss the strength, influence, and

“drive-by” PDs. This long-term professional development allowed me to reflect
on my teaching practice, develop professional relationships with talented
colleagues, and create new learning opportunities for myself and my students.
1. Students use common hashtags on Twitter to communicate their observations during a field
trip to the Occupy LA encampment.
2. Taking a cue from the wearethe99percent Tumblr, students made their own “We are the 99%
statements,” and posted them to the online Playground platform.
3. Integrating the skills and content learned in Economics, English, and Play Production,
students created artistic canvases spreading awareness of poverty in Los Angeles. They
presented their research and artwork at local community centers.

After our field trip to Occupy LA and City Hall, a student created this video, conveying the ideas
he was exposed to during that day - http://vimeo.com/33079474
“California on my Honor” was unique in that the project was sponsored by
the California court system and California State University San Marcos, but
was facilitated entirely by teacher leaders. The project immediately estab-
lished legitimacy and earned the respect of its participants, as it was run by
people currently “in the trenches,” and not by someone who was no longer
in the classroom and disconnected from the realities faced by teachers. The
program took place in a Southern California court, which allowed us to inter-
act with attorneys and judges on a daily basis, participate in a mock trial,
and observe real cases as they were happening. It allowed us to deepen our
understanding of civics course content, make connections with other teach-
ers, reflect on our own teaching, and produce curriculum that we would
implement within the next couple of months. We were actively engaged the
entire time, and rather than being handed a scripted curriculum, we were
invited to create our own. Teachers work in a variety of different contexts, with
students of diverse backgrounds, academic abilities, and individual interests.
For this reason, it is important to allow teachers the freedom to develop and
implement a curriculum that is appropriate and responsive to the needs of
their students.

As we revised our curriculum during the fall semester, teacher leaders made
themselves available to review our lesson plans and provide suggestions for
improvement. We carried out these new lessons in our classrooms and met
again four months later, armed with poster boards and handouts to share the
student work that came out of these lesson plans. As we listened to teach-
ers discuss their experiences, we provided one another with support, ideas,
and resources for improving our teaching. I had not previously participated
in a program that encouraged teachers to revise their curriculum, while also
providing support, accountability, and space for reflection and revision. The
participants of this program continue to share ideas through their Facebook
page, and our newly developed curriculum is hosted on a website for other
teachers to use. I appreciated the long-term nature of this professional devel-
opment, as well as the continued support and space for development of
professional relationships.
In the spirit of creating communities of practice and inquiry, teachers shared curricular units with
one another. The process provided critical feedback and inspiration for the teachers involved.

Professional development should not be painful, nor should it feel like a
waste of time to its participants. Just as teachers have been encouraged
to move away from the “banking method” of teaching, facilitators of profes-
sional development should also move towards a more engaging, participatory
model. Both PLAY! and “California on My Honor” provide successful models
of professional development that invite teachers to be active co-creators of
relevant and creative learning experiences. Administrators and developers
of professional development would be wise to follow the example of these
successful programs, and should aim to create meaningful, long-term oppor-
tunities for teachers to share resources and support one another.
Isabel Morales is a twelfth grade Economics, Government, and Yearbook
teacher at Los Angeles High School of the Arts, one of the first pilot schools
in LAUSD. She enjoys combining technology, the arts, and course content to
create engaging lessons for her students. In an effort to further serve as a role
model to low-income students of color, as well as expand her own knowledge
base, she is currently pursuing a Ed.D. at USC.

In early 2012, as a high school teacher interested in integrating Alternative
Reality Gaming into the classroom, I sat down and recorded a rare conversa-
tion with Anansi the spider. Over cups of tea and biscuits and horseflies, we
discussed the game “Ask Anansi,” participatory professional development, the
role of storytelling and gameplay within pedagogical development and teacher
community building, and ways to sustain this work within public schools.
Ask Anansi is an alternate reality game (ARG); it allows students and teach-
ers to role-play empowered identities to investigate real-world challenges
based on classroom curriculum. Piloted in 2011 in a ninth-grade classroom,
the premise of the game is one that extends beyond a single age group. In its
most basic sense, Ask Anansi works on the premise of challenging students
to ask and explore questions of their own design. The principles of storytelling
and personal inquiry translate across ages.
Ask Anansi seeks to inform teacher professional development via direct inter-
action with students and student expertise. This participatory model draws on
Salen and Zimmerman’s (2004) definition of Transformative Social Play:
Transformative Social Play forces us to reevaluate a formal understanding of
rules as fixed, unambiguous, and omnipotently authoritative. In any kind of
transformative play, game structures come into question and are re-shaped
by player action. In transformative social play, the mechanisms and effects of
these transformations occur on a social level. (p. 475)
Professional Development as Alternate Reality
Gaming and Youth Participatory Action Research
Antero Garcia

It is important to note that the shift in focus that occurs via transformative
social play occurs for both student and teacher. Through teacher collabora-
tion, discussion, and group provocation, teacher PD moves from rote lectures
to participatory development. Likewise, Ask Anansi is rooted in Youth Partici-
patory Action Research (YPAR) as a method of shifting teacher PD from
adult-driven to adult-facilitated.
There are three main principles that drive YPAR:
1. The collective investigation of a problem,
2. The reliance on indigenous knowledge to better understand that problem,
and
3. The desire to take individual and/or collective action to deal with the
stated problem. (McIntyre 2000, 128)
By involving students in designing and exploring meaningful learning experi-
ences, YPAR “contributes to a way of thinking about people as researchers,
as agents of change, as constructors of knowledge, actively involved in the
dialectical process of action and reflection aimed at individual and collec-
tive change” (McIntyre, 2000, 148-149). YPAR engenders young people into
the process of knowledge development. This PD model compels educators
to move from telling to asking: it elicits stories and knowledge from youth in
classrooms and is driven by youth interest.
Instead of simply learning the rules of Ask Anansi and attempting to input
them into their everyday practice, teachers come to their professional devel-
opment space with a set of simple topics or guiding questions they would
like to use as foundations for inquiry within their classes. For example, suit-
able entry points for developing a transformative learning experience could
include initial questions such as: How does the Pythagorean theorem affect
my daily life?; How does conflict impact human decisions?, or What are ways
that symbolism impact how I read Shakespeare? The PD, then, becomes less
a space for consuming content and a much more generative space: teachers
build these questions into a series of areas of inquiry that will be then fleshed
out through student expertise.
Professional Development as Alternate Reality Gaming and
Youth Participatory Action Research
Antero Garcia (CONTINUED)

In the space below, Anansi and I discuss the pragmatics of blending trans-
formative social play with Youth Participatory Action Research as a process
for guiding teacher professional development and transforming the learning
experiences of young people in schools.
A clue with a dangling spider containing a QR code lead students to an abandoned classroom
space. The experience provokes student and teacher dialogue and research about resources
and funding in urban public schools
Antero: Who is Anansi?
Anansi: Me? Well, that’s a long story (and I do love stories, as you shall see).
While many tales have been spun about me, for now it may be useful to know
that I am a West African folklore hero. I often take the shape of a spider (as I
do now). And while I encourage you to read of all my trickster tales, perhaps
most pertinent to our discussion today is the fact that I own all of the stories
you can possibly imagine. Getting me to share them with you, however… now
that’s another story.

Antero: I heard one way to get you to share your stories is through an
in-school engagement model. What is Ask Anansi?
Anansi: Ask Anansi is a community-centered action alternate reality game. In
this game students engage in inquiry-based problem solving by communicat-
ing with and helping to unravel the stories they are told by Anansi (that’s me!),
the trickster spider god of Caribbean folklore.
As the story-wielding spider god, I have answers and solutions to any ques-
tion students can imagine; and fortunately, these students have recently
received a means of communicating with me. Through simple text messages,
emails, voicemails, and even disruptions within classroom experiences,
students engage in a sustained dialogue with me.
My responses, however, are not always the most clear: I like tricks, riddles,
and befuddlement. As a result, students will require critical literacy skills to
unravel the web of my hints and instructions. Some clues are found outside
the walls of the classroom and may appear as posters, barcodes, or phone
calls. Once a question is asked, it cannot be unasked, and I am known to
grow impatient with small children that do nothing but waste my time by not
solving my puzzles - who knows what would happen to their teacher or their
classroom materials if they dawdle…
Each Anansi question will take group effort to “answer.” However, be careful.
I am never satisfied with simply finding the answers to the many ques-
tions students ask; I often require that students work towards solving the
challenges they discover. And while Ask Anansi operates within a fictitious
narrative and the students (correctly) assume that their teacher embodies
the Anansi-persona when communicating with them via text messages and
emails, the gaming environment allows students to act, question, and engage
in simultaneously critical and playful inquiry. Though the main product of this
game is one of problem-posing critical thinking and civic participation, the
goal of the game is one based in the alternate reality game’s fiction: they must
satisfy the insatiable need of Anansi for a good story.

Students searched for hidden clues in and around their school to begin an inquiry into self-
generated research topics. (Do you see me?)
Antero: It would really help me if you could show me what the Ask Anansi
goals look like in a hypothetical setting...
Anansi: Here goes: Ask Anansi’s goal is to guide students toward collective
inquiry around a negotiated topic and civic engagement in addressing under-
lying causes of these topics. For example, a class may investigate why the
food at their school is so unpopular. Through research about nutrition, budget-
ing, and distribution of food as well as qualitative surveying and ethnographic
analysis of student perceptions of school food, students may determine
that a lack of variety due to budget and contracting constraints as well as a
social perception that the food is “bad” is detracting from students receiving
adequate nutrition during the day. Next, students may determine that a course
of action is to begin developing a coalition of concerned parents and students,
speak at school board meetings, and even stage a cafeteria sit-in. Students
will reflect on their efforts, discuss changes they have made, and record these
steps in text messages, video, and mapping applications on mobile devices.

Though the main product of this game is one of problem-posing, critical think-
ing and civic participation, the goal of the game is one based in the ARG’s
fiction: they must satisfy my insatiable need for a good story. Asking me a
question seems innocuous. The game’s initial premise of asking a simple
question has significant repercussions: I will not simply provide an answer; I
will trick, confound, and tease students. My messages are often shrouded as
riddles, QR codes, or even latitude and longitude coordinates that need to be
determined and then visited. Like the media messages that students are chal-
lenged to critically assess, my dialogue with students is one that challenges
concerns of power, dominance, and agency in a capitalist environment. As
students gain more information, my responses become more demanding.
Students regularly talk and blog about their experiences. I may hack or edit
their information in an effort to further a good story.
Once students have completed initial research and analysis, I tell them that
they have the pieces of a great story but they need to now weave them into
action; students need to begin working toward a course of action around the
information they have received. Collective action and models of engagement
are examined by the class and a strategic plan is developed and enacted.
In good nature, I confess at the end of the game to having tricked the
students in places with my difficult clues. I suggest the students recruit others
to continue the story they have weaved together. After all, I am here to remind
players: a story never really ends; we may continue to tell of what happens
until the next series of adventures.
Antero: This sounds like an enriching classroom activity, but how does it
differ from more “conventional” models of PD?
Anansi: For teachers, this is really an opportunity to do a couple of things: it
allows them to expand their practice beyond the walls of their classroom and
to encourage student expertise to guide the work that occurs. However, to get
to this kind of activity, the PD is really a space for teachers to shift from roles
as experts to co-constructors of knowledge. The PD is about getting teachers
to create spaces for young people to ask questions. To do that, teachers need
to first be in a space to ask themselves questions as a peer-network. The
same way you and I are in dialogue with sustained focus on a given topic,
teachers will need to explore their pedagogical goals and look at this journey
as one to construct pedagogically.

Students utilize principles of storytelling to question their environment and begin narrating a
counter-narrative about the space they inhabit.
Antero: And how exactly do you get teachers to start allowing students to ask
questions?
Anansi: Funny you should ask, since you seem to be doing a fine job asking
questions here. From my experience as a storyteller and a community
rabble-rouser, I’ve found that people start engaging when they have specific
roles to play and spaces within which to ask questions. This Q&A conceit,
for example, is bounded by superficial constraints that limit us to discussion
about participatory professional development. If your role as the questioner
were unbounded we would be talking about favorite pizza toppings and
Russian literature. However, by mutually agreeing that we will focus on the
topic of participatory PD and my role in an ARG, we move toward ever more
specific learning contexts (It’s pepperoni and Tolstoy, BTW.)

In engaging teachers in an Alternate Reality Gaming model of instruction,
Ask Anansi seeks to move student and teacher interactions toward a model
of mutual investigation. It is an iterative Youth Participatory Action Research
(YPAR) engine. By asking students and teachers to collaboratively develop a
research question and using the fiction of communicating with me, students
are encouraged to explore and review their community while teachers engage
students as co-researchers through a process of media production and play.
This is also mirrored in the participatory PD. Though teachers may not feel it
necessary to communicate with me, the PD essentially models the student
experience: it is generative through question-driven inquiry.
Ask Anansi provokes students to explore traditional power structures within their school.

A student questions publicly why there is only one green plant at her school, “Captain Green.”
Antero: So this seems like a very different kind of experience for teacher and
student alike.
Anansi: Absolutely. One thing I should point out is that, just as teachers -
through this PD experience - shift their roles from distributors of knowledge
to facilitators of student-constructed knowledge, students, too, shift identities.
In particular, I highly recommend allowing students to take on various roles to
help them ease into the process of inquiry that Ask Anansi creates. Assigned

role shifts (even temporarily) help move students toward tangible research
results and build ownership on specific components of the work within the
classroom (some samples of ways students were given roles can be seen
here).
Antero: I think I’m still not clear how all of this stuff happening in individual
classrooms has anything to do with teacher PD and building teacher commu-
nities.
Anansi: Imagine for a second that the professional development that teach-
ers have been encountering for eons (at least in spider years) no longer
exists. Instead, teachers walk into a space that is collaboratively productive;
they take turns posing questions and engaging in dialogue with each other.
Structurally, during a school’s designated PD time, teachers spend the first
15-20 minutes independently developing a curricular or thematic question
related to their content. With them, the teachers bring instructional materials,
topics, and texts that they intend to develop lessons for. Next each teacher’s
question is briefly workshopped: they verbally share inquiry questions around
which their instructional time could be centered. The remainder of the PD is
focused on refinement of questions and teachers working in pairs and small
groups to further develop their instructional plans.
For a multidisciplinary space, one can imagine the questions will mimic
student questions – the science teacher may not understand the principles
the art teacher is hoping to teach and questions, thus, are reductive to the pith
of necessary student understanding. What happens in this PD space is that
teachers co-construct a series of question-based objectives for their individual
classrooms. They do this through engagement and provocation from their
peers. In this way, each teacher develops a model that meets the nuanced
contexts of their classroom communities and they build a stronger relational
component to their PD experience. By yielding ownership over the PD space
to teachers and to participatory experiences, school administrators ensure a
greater attention is placed on student needs and a stronger network of knowl-
edge production amongst the teaching staff.
Antero: Okay, I’m willing to try this with a group of teachers at my school, but
how do you actually go about implementing and then sustaining this project?

Anansi: As briefly mentioned above, implementation of this participatory PD
is simply a process of restructuring PD time toward teacher-driven inquiry that
leads to student-driven inquiry: if teachers are meeting weekly or bi-weekly,
this time is structured for first independent development of Socratic ques-
tioning and then a workshop space to solicit feedback from multidisciplinary
perspectives.
The long-term sustainability of Ask Anansi relies on teacher and administrator
collaboration. This game does not mandate a specific textbook, daily practice
exam drills, or other components of a standardized-testing climate. Instead,
authentic learning experiences are drawn from the community around
students in ways that provoke standards-supporting ELA instruction. This
moves teacher PD beyond the climate of high-stakes testing.
Question: You are one smart spider! I-
Anansi: Thank you.
Question: I was wondering… even though you are saying most of this work
will be constructed by teachers within their PD, do you have some, um, work-
sheet models to help us get the ball rolling?
Anansi: I suppose I would allow you to take a look… samples can be found
here. Now if you’ll excuse me, on the count of three, I will disappear and the
creepy omniscient third person will take my place to wrap things up (I assure
you this is a painless process for me).
One... Two... THREE!
While Ask Anansi is playful in tone, the PD experience for teachers is
purposefully driven to create spaces for adult and student growth. Ask Anansi
guides learning through a model I call, Inform, Perform, Transform:
Inform - Students gather, analyze, and collate information in order to produce
their own, original work.
Perform - Utilizing the knowledge and information acquired through their
informational inquiries, students produce/perform new work that is tied to a
larger critical, conceptual, and/or academic goal.
Transform - Extending their performance toward publicly shared knowledge
and action, students focus on directly impacting and critically transforming
their world.

In using the alternate reality gaming fiction as a tool for transformative social
play, teacher-targeted PD experiences should help educators collaboratively
identify ways Anansi, as a character, will drive engagement: How will Anansi,
as an outside agent, help provoke, move content forward, and drive students
toward understanding and content mastery? While the products that students
create and analyze speak to the transformative power of gaming, these activi-
ties function within this larger pedagogy of transformative social play. At its
heart, Ask Anansi is an opportunity to reposition the relational component of
the classroom community through purposeful play, storytelling, and interest-
driven research.
Antero Garcia is an assistant professor in the English department at
Colorado State University. Currently, he is conducting research on spatial
literacies, mobile media devices, and computational thinking within English
Language Arts K-12 classrooms. Antero received his Ph.D. in 2012 at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Before moving to Colorado, he was
an English teacher in South Central Los Angeles for eight years. Antero’s
research addresses technology, educational equity, and critical media literacy.
Updates about his work can be found on his blog, www.theamericancrawl.
com.

PLAY! (PARTICIPATORY LEARNING AND YOU!)
Over the past year, our team at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the Univer-
sity of Southern California has pursued a multi-faceted research project that
we refer to as PLAY!. The word PLAY! is not only an acronym for Participa-
tory Learning and You! but also represents our appreciation of the value of the
new media literacy play in the educational process. As educators are pres-
sured to ruthlessly focus on teaching to the test, play is too often left by the
wayside.
Our goal is to foster a more participatory culture of learning in which every
young person has the skills, access, knowledge, and support they need
in order to meaningfully participate in the new media landscape. Such a
culture supports the learner not only in school, but throughout the learning
ecosystem, and builds capacity for self-directed, ongoing growth. Play is an
important vehicle for bringing about this cultural shift.
What is participatory culture? - http://vimeo.com/33121279

Play challenges teachers to create a classroom culture where both they and
their students feel safe to experiment creatively and fail productively. In formal
education settings, many teachers have mixed feelings about embracing
this risk. For students, play might invoke fears of personal failure; for teach-
ers, play means letting go of prescribed outcomes. Play is often perceived
as “being off-task,” an activity whose end is “frivolous fun.” We have learned,
however, that with permission to experiment and discover through playful
learning – fears, resistances, and misunderstandings quickly dissolve. Conse-
quently, students’ levels of engagement, self-confidence, skill proficiency,
and knowledge retention increase, and teachers’ needs for participation in a
robust learning community are met.
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Informal learning contexts often facilitate youths’ acquisition of valuable skills
and experiences, yet access to these sites varies widely. Whereas the digital
divide focuses on the unequal access to technologies, the “participation
gap” is concerned with “the unequal access to the opportunities, experi-
ences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the
world of tomorrow” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel & Robison, 2006,
p. 3). Schools and libraries may be best situated to provide students with
more egalitarian access to these opportunities. So how do we achieve that?
PLAY!’s answer was to work directly with teachers, modeling what partici-
patory pedagogy can look like when integrated across grades and subject
areas. Thus, PLAY! developed a two-part professional development pilot for
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) educators of grades 6-12: The
Summer Sandbox and PLAYing Outside the Box, which ran consecutively
from July to December 2011.
Vanessa Vartabedian and Laurel Felt (CONTINUED)

THE SUMMER SANDBOX
The Summer Sandbox was designed as an intensive one-week profes-
sional development (PD) workshop geared toward collaborative exploration
of participatory learning. PLAY! hoped that, by experiencing the rewards of
a participatory learning environment first-hand, participants would go on to
explore PLAY!’s pedagogy more deeply in their own classrooms and schools.
Twenty-one educators from 17 schools and a multitude of disciplines, includ-
ing social studies, physical education, life sciences and special education,
completed the program.
In terms of technology, The Summer Sandbox modeled various digital media
tools and resources such as wikis, blogs, video-sharing sites, online presenta-
tion and design software, mobile devices, mobile apps, and the PLAYground
- PLAY!’s free, online platform for the curation, creation and circulation of
user-generated learning activities. The PD also modeled the productive use
of non-digital media and technology, such as analog art and writing tools
(see Figures 1 and 2), board games, face-to-face conversation, and personal
artifacts. This approach emphasized the philosophy that technologies should
be judged in context, according to their capacity to help learners meet learn-
ing goals. No single technology, whether high tech (e.g., Wikipedia), low tech
(e.g., CD-roms), or no tech (e.g., role-play), is an unqualified boon. Addition-
ally, PLAY! facilitators refused to assume the position of expert by unilaterally
teaching participants any given technology. They challenged participants
instead to reflect on their discrete lesson’s learning goals, identify tools that
might help meet those goals, search for and locate those tools, learn how to
use them through play, and incorporate or reject according to the tools’ poten-
tial. When time permitted, facilitators also sat down beside participants and
joined them as co-learners in the process of pursuit and discovery.
Accordingly, The Summer Sandbox’s curriculum included hands-on activi-
ties, individual and small group challenges, community partners’ resource
presentations, critical dialogues, expert sharing sessions, and curriculum
construction. Participants also engaged in exploration and remix on the
PLAYground.

Figure 1. Participants were invited to inform their co-learners about their strengths and chal-
lenges so that the riches of the community could be identified and maximized.

Figure 2. On a daily basis, participants were also welcomed to declare which parts of the
session were working for them and which parts could benefit from retooling.
Collectively, these experiences were designed to provide participants with
opportunities to:
• Showcase identity;
• Build capacity and community;
• Gain familiarity with new media literacy skills, social and emotional learning
skills, and participatory learning;
• Meaningfully integrate new technology practices that heighten engagement in
learning;
• Evaluate how well their classrooms support participatory learning;
• Rethink curriculum design to incorporate participatory learning practices;
• Reflect on pedagogy and offer feedback to others in face-to-face and medi-
ated contexts; and
• Have fun!

For management of curricula and communication, The Summer Sandbox
relied upon its PLAY! wiki. This space for asynchronous reflection and demo-
cratic sharing was intended to increase ownership of and participation in the
PD experience.
On their applications for The Summer Sandbox, teachers stated their goals
for participating. Some included boosting student engagement, incorporating
more technology into their teaching, and connecting with like-minded peers.
“I hope to learn innovating [sic] strategies that will enhance my lessons, which
will challenge my students to become 21st Century learners. In addition, I
hope to develop relationships with fellow colleagues and form a partnership
with neighboring schools and organizations.” –Participating teacher
Several teachers also hoped to increase both the relevance of curricular
materials and their own self-efficacy vis-a-vis technology.
“I am looking to expand my own knowledge and understanding of using tech-
nology as a critical learning and instructional medium. I would like to learn
new ways to design relevant lessons and projects for my students.” –Partici-
pating teacher
Very few educators mentioned the effectiveness of harnessing media from
popular culture to help students access core concepts. Far more identified the
utility of high-tech media, such as digital presentation tools, for this purpose:
“I enjoy using media in my daily classroom instruction. Images, video clips
and music helps students to open their imaginations. The students learn best
when their imaginations allow them to connect music, lyrics, for example, to
the history content I communicate to them” – Participating Teacher
However, immediately after the week-long PD, these teachers perceived
drastically different ways to meet their educational goals, shifting from techno-
centrism to participatory design and play:
“After this week, I realize that while there is some equipment I will likely
purchase to help me implement my fledgling plans – the discussion as to the
social, cultural, and political implications of using images, accessing informa-
tion, and presenting information sort of made it quite urgent that my teaching
from now on is informed by these discussions.

For example, many of my students already own iPod Touch units, so after
this week, it seems imperative that I give them an opportunity to actually use
them for learning. … My future goals are to prime the pump with things like
the 54-second video, and creating a Challenge for my kids to use in class,
and start a Wiki about what they are currently learning, but to hand over the
control of the content to them.” – Participating Teacher
Karl, a physical education teacher who initially just wanted to find activities
for his students to do on rainy days, concluded by realizing his passion for
learning through games. Middle-school educators Katie and Natalie entered
with the aspiration to better grasp media literacy concepts and left with the
resolve to incorporate new media literacies (NMLs) into their curricula. Most
participants also designed no, low and high tech activities to critically examine
media products’ potentials and/or creatively incorporate social networking. For
example, U.S. history teacher Nancy planned for her students to adopt the
identities of various Founding Fathers and compose digital or analog Tweets
espousing their perspectives.
Teachers reflect on their experiences during the last day of the intensive week-long Summer
Sandbox.- http://vimeo.com/30071237

PLAYing OUTSIDE THE BOX
In order to sustain The Summer Sandbox graduates’ implementation of
participatory learning, PLAY! offered a PD extension called PLAYing Outside
the Box (POTB). Its structure was even less prescriptive than that of the
relatively malleable five-day immersion. POTB was conceptualized more as
a service than a seminar, intended to scaffold and support participants’ self-
directed efforts. This personalizable design reflects innovation in PD best
practice. According to education expert Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (2006),
“...[P]rograms must help teachers develop the disposition to continue to seek
answers to difficult problems of teaching and learning and the skills to learn
from practice (and from their colleagues) as well as to learn for practice” (p.
304).
In addition to a second LAUSD salary point and $1000 stipend, participants
also benefited from tailored, one-on-one mentoring; continued access to
like-minded communities of practice; and outlets for demonstration of and
reflection on experiments in curriculum and pedagogy. Approximately half
of The Summer Sandbox graduates enrolled in POTB. These 10 educators
hailed from 10 different schools, located up to 20 miles apart, that served
student populations whose socioeconomic and developmental profiles varied
considerably.
POTB utilized a research approach that values co-constructed knowledge-
building through collaboration, known as Participatory Action Research
(PAR). PAR is an iterative cycle of planning, action and reflection, with regular
re-evaluation over time.
PLAYing Outside the Box’s curriculum consisted of the following elements:
Reading: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Educa-
tion for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) was the only “required”
reading. Prior to the PD, none of the participants had read this conceptual
springboard for PLAY!.
Discussion: In order to share and expand on PLAY!’s concepts and prac-
tices in context, participants were encouraged to utilize the PLAY! wiki, the
PLAYground platform, VoiceThread and Vimeo.
PLAY On! Workshops: Participants could choose to participate in at least
one of three PLAY On! programs held after-school and/or on Saturdays.
These diverse programs offered no, low, and high tech means to experiment
with civic engagement through storytelling (see Figures 3 and 4).

Figure 3. Teachers mark and annotate their schools’ neighborhoods in Los Angeles
during a Departures Youth Voices session
Figure 4. An English teacher draws animation frames with AnimAction during a Satur-
day workshop

Figure 5. Video still from teachers’ AnimAction project about online participation
Coaching: POTB offered ongoing, one-on-one mentorship to all participants.
This support was intended to help educators realize the goals they had set
during The Summer Sandbox, as well as facilitate their efforts’ long-term
sustainability. Participants reported increased self-confidence and self-effi-
cacy, and appreciated their mentor’s instrumental and emotional support as
they experimented with new tools and pedagogical approaches.they experimented with new tools and pedagogical approaches.
Figure 6. Examples of no tech and low tech ways of using Twitter.

U.S. Government teacher Nancy believed in “meeting students where they’re
at with what they’re already doing,” and so designed this opportunity to
creatively assess her students’ knowledge about historical figures.
Video Reflection: Watching oneself on video and receiving supportive,
critical feedback from peers and coaches supports teachers’ active knowl-
edge construction and sense of self-efficacy (Goker, 2005; Pickering, 2003).
Classrooms are complex contextual environments; to make sense of these
spaces, repeated viewings of video logs and reflections are crucial (Kinzer &
Risko, 1998). Thus, participants in POTB videotaped themselves leading an
activity in their classroom and uploaded these videos to a private space on
Vimeo. They also videotaped and uploaded a post-activity reflection. POTB
peers and PLAY! facilitators viewed these videos and offered feedback via
comments.
Isabel’s lesson: Congressional Soccer, American Government and Economics,
Grade 12 - http://vimeo.com/33052302
Isabel reflects on her own lesson - http://vimeo.com/3305283

Transmedia Play: The PLAYground is an open-content, open-knowledge
online system that encourages both adults and youth to discover, learn and
teach each other. The PLAYground uses “Challenges,” or non-linear, trans-
media lessons and activities, to encourage learning through play (see Figure
6). Teachers in POTB informed the PLAYground’s current design by using
the platform during its alpha phase and sharing usability feedback in focus
groups.groups.
Figure 6. Student-created Challenge for Helen’s English class
Helen reflects on using the PLAYground with students in English class - http://vimeo.
com/32107741

PLAY! Retreat: POTB participants met for one last session to share class-
room experiences, reflect on personal growth, identify challenges, discuss
sustainability, and plan for next steps.
PARTICIPANT REFLECTIONS
Facilitators utilized a reflection technique called Most Significant Change
(MSC; Davies & Dart, 2005). MSC asks participants to describe their personal
experiences of program-produced change and articulate “the significance of
the story from their point of view” (Davies & Dart, 2005, p. 26). (Link to this
activity’s protocol here.)
While each participant’s experience was unique, three key themes emerged
across all the stories: surrendering some classroom control in order to honor
students’ self-directed learning and creativity; embracing technology and
digital media even in the absence of personal expertise/mastery; and valuing
process over product – that is, escaping the tyranny of perfection.
Literacy coach Natalie titled her MSC account “Becoming Tech Savvy.”
Natalie introduced a unit called “Voices for Change” in which students
researched, wrote, filmed, and edited public service announcements on
issues of their choosing.
“Being able to acquire the skills to use different digital tools... being able to
navigate various issues that came up... It empowered me, made me feel
more confident as an educator in the 21st century because, while I assume
that my students know a lot, on the other hand, they don’t, and yet they are
very familiar with a lot of what social media is and how it’s what engages
them, and so now I feel more equipped to make my instruction relevant to
them.”
“It [the PD] inspired me to think about what kind of things do I want to
change…I would encourage as many teachers to just keep an open mind, to
be willing to make mistakes, to be willing to have fun, know that not every-
thing’s going to work out perfectly, but that’s okay, it’s going to help you to
become more proficient.”
High school government and economics teacher Isabel dubbed her story
“Giving Voice to the Youth.”
“For me the most significant change was … I’ve definitely integrated it [tech-
nology] into pretty much every project. In the past I was worried that I didn’t
have all the skills necessary to teach them things or we [school] didn’t have
all the equipment or they [students] didn’t have it at home. But I thought, this
year, let’s just go for it. And I was open to students participating in whatever
way they could.”

Subsequently, she modified her curriculum extensively, introducing a project
in which students visited the Occupy L.A. encampment and created a PLAY-
ground Challenge to share out their learning (see Figure 7).
Figure 7. “#Occupy: Social Media, Art and Protest” Challenge created by Isabel, a high school
government and economics teacher
Continued Isabel:
“Our kids have made songs. They’ve made videos. They’ve done stuff
online. And I actually think they’ve learned a lot. This is the first year that,
after a unit is over, students come back to it and they’re like, ‘Oh, Miss, did
you hear that this happened with Occupy L.A. or on a Facebook page?’
They’ll just post videos and news stories about it and talk about it. And I’m
like, ‘Well, that’s cool.’”

Figure 8. Isabel’s government and economics students’ “I am the 99%” statements, posted as
“Your Turn” responses to the “#Occupy: Social Media, Art and Protest” Challenge
A classroom viewing of the Chinese documentary Please Vote for Me also
ignited Isabel’s students’ curiosity.
“I think that this year my students have definitely gotten more engaged with
the world. They said, ‘Can we have our own election?’ I was like, ‘Well, I
wasn’t planning on it, but okay, let’s do it...’ And in there I integrated things
about campaigning and media, and so we became a class congress, and
so they’re learning how bills get passed but by doing it themselves...It has
involved letting go, and just being very, very experimental. And being okay
with it if it’s not perfect. But,” Isabel smiled, “I think we’re having a really good
experience.”

SUSTAINABILITY
Despite these dedicated educators’ passion, several issues still challenge
comprehensive and long-term sustainability of PLAY!-related practices and
networks. When queried as to the type of support that educators require in
order to variously incorporate digital media, learning through play, partici-
patory learning, and new media literacies into their classrooms, educators’
responses cohered around three categories: curricular support, e.g., online
support community, lesson plans, models, and examples; personal support,
e.g., administrator buy-in, professional development/training, peers’ endorse-
ment, and classroom assistance; and financial support, e.g., funds for
materials.
Broadly, teachers need time. They need paid time outside of the class-
room to develop curricula and assessments, seek inspiration and reflect
on experiences, and engage in mentor relationships (both as teachers and
as students). Teachers and students also need more free time inside of the
classroom to build community and culture, explore new processes and pursue
emergent opportunities, and ensure that formal schooling doesn’t prevent true
education. When these aforementioned activities are conducted socially as
opposed to individually, embedded within and supported by a community of
practice, then their richness increases (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Additional sustainability challenges include:
• Firewalls and Internet filters commonly installed on school networks that deny
users’ access to social networking, gaming, and other sites in which rich
collective experiences can be enjoyed. According to Jenkins, this effectively
“strips the [Internet’s] collective intelligence of [its] diversity,” thereby reducing
its potential and diminishing its value (cited in Long, 2008);
• Inadequate digital technology at school (related to difficulty in booking lab
space and equipment, or simply not having such resources at all);

• Equity/access differentials related to digital technology use out of school due
to families’ various income levels and purchasing decisions;
• Lack of administrator buy-in (to the point of forbidding the use of mobile
devices); and
• Lack of co-teachers’ support (who often become annoyed with students using
mobile devices in their classes and so threaten confiscation).
Although PLAY! facilitators frequently modeled the use of the wiki and partici-
pants posted to the wiki during the PD’s tenure, neither the space nor the
practice has been taken up. Because POTB educators are so spread out
across the sprawling district, they are unlikely to bump into one another regu-
larly or even randomly. Thus absent from both virtual and physical common
grounds, POTB graduates risk losing touch.
Such a fate would be an anathema to Ziyi, who declared at the program’s
concluding retreat, “I really need us to somehow continue. Because not many
people in the district are doing this kind of stuff and it’s difficult to get a group
together that’s doing just creative things like everybody else is doing... I just
need the opportunity and a place and time for us to have future gatherings
like this. Because I’ve gotten a lot out of it and just to see what other people
are doing is really inspirational and it gives me ideas about what I could do on
my own classroom. So I need more. Please don’t let it stop.”
As the Coordinator of PLAY!, Vanessa Vartabedian plays an integral part of
developing, implementing and assessing new models of participatory learn-
ing through PLAY! action-research methods at USC’s Annenberg Innovation
Lab. PLAY! projects include after-school programs for students and profes-
sional development with teachers in Los Angeles. Vanessa’s background is in
theatre, film and education. She is the producer and director of several award-
winning short films, founder of Tidal Theatre Company in New York/Cape Cod
and holds a BFA in Theater from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Laurel Felt, the Research Assistant for PLAY!, is a doctoral candidate at
USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, focusing on
nurturing youths’ social and emotional competence and meaningful commu-
nication. With PLAY!, Laurel developed pedagogy, wrote curricula, taught
programs, designed research, and analyzed data. Currently, she co-chairs
USC Impact Games; consults with Laughter for a Change, GameDesk; and
develops curriculum for USC Joint Education Project, USC Shoah Foundation
Institute. Laurel received her B.S. from Northwestern University and M.A. from
Tufts University.

DESIGNING INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Most young people are surrounded by interactive
media. But their engagement with interactive
media is often limited to consumption, with fewer
opportunities to participate as designers. We
see young people playing video games, but
not creating their own games. We see young
people accessing large repositories of user-
generated content, like Wikipedia or YouTube,
but not understanding how they might contribute or
how new repositories might be developed. We see
young people contributing personal and social
information to services like Face-
book, but without knowing how
the infrastructure is (or might
be) designed to support control
over that information. Young people are readers of computational culture, but
are mostly unable to participate as writers of computational culture.
There is an increasing sense of urgency that everyone should be able to
participate as writers of computational culture. This need has been expressed
by a variety of sources, including computer science education research-
ers (e.g. Guzdial & Forte, 2005), literary theorists (e.g. Hayles, 2005), and
government agencies (e.g. Chopra, 2012), and stems, in part, from a concern
that unless we understand how to actively participate in computational
culture, we risk being controlled by it:
Everyday life is increasingly regulated by complex technologies that most
people neither understand nor believe they can do much to influence. The
very technologies they create to control their life environment paradoxically
can become a constraining force that, in turn, controls how they think and
behave. (Bandura, 2001, p.17)
In order to support young people’s development as designers, not just
consumers, of interactive media, they need access to tools and commu-
nity. To this end, the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media
Lab, with support from the National Science Foundation, has developed a
programming environment, called Scratch, that enables young people to
create their own computational media – interactive stories, games, anima-
tions, and simulations – and share their creations online. The Scratch website
ScratchEd:
Developing support for educators
as designers
Karen Brennan
media is often limited to consumption, with fewer
not creating their own games. We see young
people accessing large repositories of user-
generated content, like Wikipedia or YouTube,
but not understanding how they might contribute or
how new repositories might be developed. We see
young people contributing personal and social

(http://scratch.mit.edu), launched in May 2007, has become an active online
community, with more than a million registered members sharing, discussing,
and remixing projects (Resnick et al., 2009). There are more than 2.5 million
projects on the Scratch website, and each day members (mostly ages 8 to 16)
upload approximately 2500 new Scratch projects to the website – on average,
two new projects every minute. The collection of projects is incredibly
diverse: interactive newsletters, science simulations, virtual tours, animated
dance contests, interactive tutorials, and many others, all programmed with
Scratch’s graphical programming blocks.
Scratch follows in the constructionist tradition – an approach to learning that
emphasizes the importance of constructing, building, making, and designing
as ways of knowing, “that knowledge is not simply transmitted from teacher
to student, but actively constructed by the mind of the learner. Children don’t
get ideas; they make ideas” (Kafai & Resnick, 1996, p. 1). This builds on
constructivist assumptions that learning does not happen through a process
of transfer or acquisition, but rather that it is a process of a learner construct-
ing new models and understandings that are connected to the learner’s
existing structures and models (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 1991).
Constructionism is grounded in the belief that the most effective learn-
ing experiences grow out of the active construction of all types of things,
particularly things that are personally or socially meaningful (Bruckman,
2006; Papert, 1980), that are developed through interactions with others
(Papert, 1980; Rogoff, 1994), and that support thinking about one’s own
thinking (Kolodner, 2003; Papert, 1980). These four aspects of construction-
ism – learning through the activities of designing, personalizing, sharing, and
reflecting – are key activities of young people participating as designers of
interactive media with Scratch.
TEACHER RESOURCES
Much of the early use of Scratch took place in homes and after-school
settings, and many of the initial participants came from home environments
that encouraged and supported creative explorations with technology. But in
recent years, a growing number of schools have started to include Scratch in
classroom activities. The adoption of Scratch in schools is essential for broad-
ening and diversifying the community of young people who are participating
as computational creators, moving beyond early adopters and connecting
opportunities for learning across informal and formal settings.
ScratchEd:
Developing support for educators as designers
Karen Brennan (CONTINUED)

To further the inclusion of Scratch in schools, we ask: what support do teach-
ers need in order to facilitate young people’s development as creators of
interactive media, and engage them in activities of designing, personalizing,
sharing, and reflecting?
Scratch is used in a variety of settings – across disciplines, from comput-
ing studies to language arts to science to visual arts, and across ages, from
kindergarten to college – and by educators who have varying levels of famil-
iarity with Scratch and computational creation. In order to support this diverse
range of disciplines, audiences, and experience levels, a variety of profes-
sional development opportunities have been designed that educators can
access in multiple ways.
The ScratchEd professional development model involves several key compo-
nents. First, there is an online community for educators working with or
interested in Scratch, called ScratchEd (http://scratched.media.mit.edu).
More than 5000 educators have joined ScratchEd in the first two and a half
years since its launch in August 2009, and educators have shared hundreds
of stories and resources, as well as asked and answered thousands of ques-
tions. To accompany the ScratchEd online community activities, there are
face-to-face and online gatherings where teachers can gain a deeper under-
standing of Scratch and constructionist approaches to learning; these include
monthly introductory workshops for educators new to Scratch, meetups for
educators with some Scratch experiences, and webinars that are recorded
and shared on ScratchEd. Finally, there are resources for teachers to use
when introducing Scratch to students and when conducting workshops for
their colleagues. For example, a curriculum guide for Scratch was released
in September 2011, and was downloaded more than 16,000 times in the four
months following its release. Accessing and exploring these resources is
made as easy as possible by connecting announcements to other channels,
such as email, Twitter, and Facebook.
The role that teachers occupy in their professional development is a central
consideration for designing support and activities. Many professional devel-
opment opportunities treat teachers as consumers, neglecting fundamental
understandings about how people learn, as evidenced by language like
“teacher training.” As Papert (1993) argued,
Although the name is not what is most important about this concept, it is
curious that the phrase “teacher training” comes trippingly off the tongues
of people who would be horrified at the suggestion that teachers are being
trained to “train” children. (p. 70)
ScratchEd:

For designers of professional development opportunities, teachers must be
respected as learners. Teachers need to be treated as designers of learning
environments, not merely agents enacting a vision, following a prescription
for pedagogy. Teachers need to be treated as co-designers of their learn-
ing experiences in professional development. The ScratchEd approach is to
create opportunities for teachers to engage in the same designing, personal-
izing, sharing, and reflecting activities that are essential for young people as
designers of interactive media.
DESIGNING, PERSONALIZING, SHARING, REFLECTING
Designing, personalizing, sharing, and reflecting are integrated in all aspects
of the ScratchEd approach to teacher professional development – from the
design of the online community, to the face-to-face and virtual gatherings,
to the resources. For the remainder of this case study, we use the monthly
meetups (which are a, , ttended primarily by K-12 classroom educators) as
one example of how these activities are supported in our professional devel-
opment.
The monthly meetups began in December 2010. They emerged as a “next-
step” space, after several years of hosting introductory Scratch workshops for
hundreds of Scratch educators, as a way for educators interested in Scratch
to connect with their peers, learn more about working with Scratch in a class-
room setting, and share their experiences. The meetups are three hours in
duration, take place on Saturday mornings at the MIT Media Lab, and are
structured into three parts. Part one involves networking and introductions, in
which people get to know each other – or given the number of repeat attend-
ees – to get caught up. Part two consists of self-organized breakout sessions.
The group (which ranges in size from 10 to 40 people) collectively negoti-
ates different tracks of learning, focus, and activity, and then breaks out into
smaller groups to pursue those interests. Part three, which occurs over lunch,
involves reporting out from the breakout groups, sharing experiences in a
Show & Tell format, and general group updates.
ScratchEd:

Designing
At a recent meetup, the group had just finished the networking activity, and
it was time to organize the activities for the rest of the session. “OK,” one of
the meetup hosts said to the group, “this is always the most chaotic time of
the meetup. What suggestions do people have for what they’d like to achieve
today?” People started to call out suggestions: “I want to learn how to use
the pen blocks!”, “Can someone help me understand variables?”, “How are
costumes different from sprites?”, “I developed an assessment that I’d like
some feedback on.”, “Oh, that reminds me of a resource that I found and
wanted to share and get reactions from the group.” Julie, an educator who
has attended numerous meetups, volunteered to lead – in collaboration with
Sarah, another meetup regular – a session combining several of the sugges-
tions that were focused on learning more about how to create with Scratch.
They developed a breakout group that supported participants’ explora-
tions with Scratch through a design challenge of building a project given a
particular constraint. While this subgroup met and worked on Scratch proj-
ects, another subgroup discussed strategies for helping kids get started with
Scratch, and one person spent time planning an upcoming workshop he was
hosting for his colleagues.
In the context of Scratch, teachers act as designers at multiple levels. They
are designers of computational media (like their students) and designers of
learning environments (for their students). The meetups serve as a space to
support both of these activities.
As designers of computational media, teachers often want to learn more
about particular features of Scratch (as in the vignette above) or develop
strategies for making projects. Teachers vary in their experience with Scratch,
and in how comfortable they feel with their own level of experience. Some
teachers are unwilling to work with Scratch until they have attained what they
feel is a reasonable level of mastery. Other teachers feel more comfortable
with the (ideally) open-ended nature of Scratch design activities, and see
their role less as the “one who knows” and more as the “one who helps.” As
Margaret, a high-school art teacher said about the role of an educator who
works with Scratch:
It would be good if the teacher feels that they can say, “Well, I don’t know.”
Because there’s no way you’re going to be able to answer all [your students’]
questions. I don’t know how to do some things, but I feel OK as long as I can
sort of know where to get help.
ScratchEd:

As designers of learning environments, teachers often share their lesson and
unit plans with each other, comparing their strategies for designing learn-
ing environments – how much structure to provide, what roles people play
in the environment, and which resources to make available. The meetup
itself becomes an exercise in the design of learning environments, with the
teachers participating as co-designers of their professional development
experience. The ScratchEd team, which hosts the professional development,
provides an outline (day, time, 3-part structure), a place, and food, but the
teachers fill in the details, designing learning experiences for themselves and
their colleagues.
Designing: Pac-Man Fever - http://vimeo.com/36922504
Personalizing
In a breakout session about assessing Scratch projects, Theresa (an educa-
tor who runs an after-school Scratch club for middle-schoolers) suggested
that the group look at a Scratch project rubric for middle-school students she
had found on the ScratchEd website. Carter, who was using Scratch with his
7th-grade math students, liked the rubric, but said that he would need to add
dimensions to the rubric that covered content – the mathematical concepts
he was interested in weren’t covered. Julie, who was using Scratch with
10th-grade computer science students, also liked the rubric, but said that she
would need to modify it to include more advanced computer science concepts
ScratchEd:

and practices. Inez, who was currently working with 2nd-grade students, liked
the rubric, but couldn’t imagine her students using it for self-assessment –
the language was too sophisticated, and her students weren’t fluent writers
yet. Some of Carter’s students also struggled with writing, he said, and the
group brainstormed ways of dealing with that particular challenge. Adrien, a
research intern with the ScratchEd project, wondered if having the kids record
audio responses to the rubric prompts (instead of text) would be a good
approach. Carter didn’t think that would work with his students because he
didn’t have access to good microphones, but Inez was inspired. That month,
Inez experimented with having her 2nd-graders record their project develop-
ment reflections.
Scratch’s ability to fit into a wide variety of settings attracts a diverse array of
teachers. Although introductory workshop activities are usually structured in
a way that keeps the learners pursuing a collective learning goal, meetups
are structured to provide participants with opportunities to define and pursue
learning goals that suit their individual contexts. Meetups are not one-size-
fits-all, offering multiple pathways and engaging the diversity of participant
perspectives. This diversity often leads to new ideas and inspiration, through
the process of looking across ages and across curricular areas. Personaliza-
tion is further supported by providing access to resources that educators can
remix and customize. All of the resources that the ScratchEd team develops
are shared via the ScratchEd online community and are Creative Commons
licensed.
Personalizing: Different Perspectives, Different Pathways - http://vimeo.com/36925488
ScratchEd:

Sharing
Twelve people signed up for the Show & Tell component of the meetup.
Jessica shared a project that one of her students had created and asked
for feedback from the group. Robert presented an activity to support his
students’ explorations of the Cartesian coordinate system with Scratch.
Laura described how she worked with a music teacher to record her students
singing and how the students incorporated the mp3s into Scratch projects.
Jackie catalyzed the group of teachers by talking about her experiences
working with the Scratch online community, which many teachers feel they
are unable to bring into their classrooms. Drawing on her experiences as an
English major, Jackie argued that it was essential for students to share their
work with each other and the world. She talked about some of the challenges
that she faced, and how she dealt with those challenges. She told the group,
“My middle-schoolers are mostly inspired by the feedback they get from their
peers and the gratification they get from sharing their projects in such a public
way.” Some of the teachers who had been unwilling to experiment with the
website were inspired by Jackie’s story and followed up with her for further
conversation.
Members of the MIT Scratch Team attend the meetups to learn about educa-
tors’ experiences and to offer support and guidance: technical advice, project
ideas, resource connections. But teachers offer a different and important form
of support and guidance, with greater legitimacy when talking about Scratch
in the classroom. The power of personal testimonials from fellow teachers has
supported great learning moments for meetup participants, which is why the
Show & Tell component is a part of every meetup. Teachers get ideas from
each other, find collaborators, and cultivate confidence to experiment and try
new things. The more than 50 recorded Show & Tell videos are some of the
most popular resources in the ScratchEd online community, and have been
viewed thousands of times.
ScratchEd:

Sharing: Learning Together - http://vimeo.com/36923067
Reflecting
“Let’s start today,” one of the meetup facilitators said, “with reflections on the
past month.” Handing out red, yellow, and green sticky notes, the facilita-
tor asked everyone to write down something that they felt great about (the
green), something that they felt ambivalent about (the yellow), and something
that they felt not-so-great about (the red) in their teaching practices. The room
fell silent as people thought about the red, yellow, and green of their month.
After a few minutes, people shared some of the successes and challenges
they had experienced. The red, yellow, and green reflections served as a
basis for designing the rest of the meetup, identifying areas of group exper-
tise, as well as areas for further development.
Reflection – the process of stepping back, assessing what is known and what
is to be known – is often neglected in the hectic activities of a busy educator’s
teaching practice. Teachers need opportunities to reflect on their practice, to
talk about their successes and challenges, to get feedback and fresh perspec-
tives on their experiences, and to be asked questions about their ideas. The
meetup structure is designed to include multiple points of reflection: reflecting
on one’s teaching practice (as illustrated by the preceding vignette), reflect-
ing on one’s learning experiences in the breakout sessions (through reflective
reporting over lunch), and reflecting on the meetup itself (through exit notes
and ScratchEd forum posts).
ScratchEd:

Reflecting: On Learning - http://vimeo.com/36932572
DESIGNING FOR DESIGNERS
To broaden participation in computational creation with a tool like Scratch,
its inclusion in school-based activities needs to be supported. Teachers are
powerful collaborators in working toward this goal and the ScratchEd team
has been studying how to support teachers – creating spaces of learning,
exploration, and opportunity that respect teachers as learners and designers.
These spaces are co-developed by researchers and teachers following the
same design principles that are advocated for young designers of computa-
tional media:
• Designing: Teachers need opportunities that treat them as designers of
learning environments – ideally supported by involving participants as
co-designers of their own professional development experiences.
• Personalizing: Teachers come from a variety of settings and need to
make connections to their personal interests and contexts.
• Sharing: Teachers need to hear from other teachers about their expe-
riences. Shared, first-hand experiences have greater authenticity and
legitimacy than experiences communicated by someone outside of that
lived experience.
• Reflecting: Teachers need opportunities to critically reflect on their
methods in order to assess where they are and where they would like to
be.
ScratchEd:

Working within a co-designed or participatory model of professional develop-
ment presents challenges. There is, for example, always a tension between
promoting ideas about how Scratch might ideally be used, and connecting
with educators’ needs and approaches. In early meetups, there was also
some confusion about the meetup model – it represented an approach quite
different from the professional development that most educators are accus-
tomed to. Over time, educators are taking greater ownership of the meetup
space, as a regular format for the meetups is cultivated and the culture of
trust and risk-taking required for this type of learning is developed.
These professional development activities are assessed through observa-
tion of – and conversations about – what teachers are doing and saying.
Are teachers designing, personalizing, sharing, and reflecting? Are teachers
returning to participate in the collaborative, co-constructed space? Are teach-
ers learning more about Scratch, making connections to new ideas and to
each other, and sharing their experiences? Most importantly, however, is the
degree of iteration. Success is when teachers are able to be iterative in their
practice, trying new things based on something they learned at a previous
session. Success is when members of the group, as a professional develop-
ment collective, are iterative in these co-designed opportunities and structures
– taking the best of previous meetups, making connections between the
different professional development opportunities, and designing new learning
experiences together.
Acknowledgements:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foun-
dation under Grant No. 1019396. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do
not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Karen Brennan is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, a member of the
Scratch Team, and leads the ScratchEd project. Her research is primarily
concerned with the ways in which learning communities support computa-
tional creators. More concretely, her work focuses on Scratch and the Scratch
educator community, studying how participation in the Scratch online commu-
nity and how professional development for educators can support young
people as creators of computational media.
ScratchEd:

We agree with widespread concerns that schools must change to reflect
the increasingly networked world (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). But
we believe that many current efforts to define and assess “21st Century Skills”
are misguided (e.g., Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2007) because they
reframe interactive digital networking practices as decontextualized skills,
while ignoring the importance of multi-modal writing in authentic networked
contexts (see Brandt, 2005). We also believe that societies will continue to
standardize conventional academic knowledge and hold teachers and schools
accountable for it. By “conventional” we are referring to knowledge of reading,
writing, math, and the various domains that Gee (2004) characterizes as
“academic varieties of language and thinking.”
This paper describes the collaborative design of curricular modules that
embrace newer “participatory” theories of learning and assessment. These
modules reframe the relatively static knowledge outlined in the U.S. Common
Core State Standards as more dynamic interactive practices. By including
networked open educational resources in these modules, classrooms learn
to learn in the digital knowledge networks of the future; by including care-
fully constructed classroom assessments, teachers learn how to indirectly
(but consistently) ensure that each student takes away enduring understand-
ing (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) of targeted “conceptual tools.” By bracketing
modules with conventional achievement tests, researchers can document
achievement impact and document improvement over time. Importantly, this
approach obtains and documents achievement impact without ever reducing
the content knowledge in the standards or the interactive knowledge practices
to isolated associations that might appear on an achievement test.
DIGITAL NETWORKS, PARTICIPATORY LEARNING, AND SCHOOLS
The shift to participatory teaching and learning will be a daunting transfor-
mation for many schools and teachers. Conventional views of learning and
teaching have left teachers and students most comfortable with structured
activities that present well-defined content that successful students can confi-
dently reproduce on classroom assessments. And teachers are increasingly
pressured to directly increase scores on standardized achievement tests,
which often leads to dreary test prep and “interim” assessments. The crush of
heavy teaching loads limit the informal sharing and mentoring that most other
professionals take for granted, and which facilitated prior transformations in
most other information-based industries.
Participatory Assessment for Participatory
Teaching and Learning
in School Contexts
Daniel T. Hickey and Rebecca C. Itow

This transformation must reflect the cultural practices that new networked
technologies foster (Jenkins et al., 2006). It will require teachers to think
about what it means to know and (therefore) learn in new ways. We agree
with Brown and Adler (2008) that so-called “situative” theories of learning
(e.g., Greeno et al., 1998) are essential for understanding how knowledge is
created, shared, and learned in new knowledge networks and participatory
cultures. From these perspectives, the contexts in which academic knowledge
is used are a fundamental part of that knowledge. Rather than just examples
and illustrations to help students understand concepts and practice skills, the
contexts-of-use give those concepts and skills their meaning.
More than most other information-based professionals, teachers’ work
is fundamentally defined by their assumptions about knowing and learn-
ing. Adjusting one’s thinking and practice to reflect these newer theories of
learning may be uncomfortable for many teachers. While we think that new
assessment is essential for transforming schooling, new assessment prac-
tices must be embedded in curricular resources that are immediately useful if
teachers are to experience them in a meaningful way.
So far in our work we have focused on developing curricular resources and
assessments in close collaboration with a few select teachers. Generally
speaking, we believe that such resources should
• Foster participatory learning of new digital media practices while supporting
whatever conventional literacies, numeracies, and academic knowledge that
teachers are accountable for;
• Be usable with modest levels of professional development and prevailing
levels of student network access;
• Be less laborious than existing resources.
PRIOR COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATORY ASSESSMENT DESIGN
PRINCIPLES
This research was initiated in 2008 as collaboration between a University-
based team of assessment specialists, Project New Media Literacies, and
one gifted English Language Arts (ELA) teacher. As elaborated in Hickey,
McWilliams, and Honeyford (2011), this collaboration used emerging sociocul-
tural approaches to informal and formal classroom assessments for Project
NML’s Teacher’s Strategy Guide. These assessments structured increasingly
formal activities, where the initial activities are more informal and participatory,
while the later activities are more formal and conventional. The assessments
help students and teachers see how academic knowledge takes on different
Participatory Assessment for Participatory Teaching
and Learning in School Contexts
Daniel T. Hickey and Rebecca C. Itow (CONTINUED)

meaning in different contexts. The assessments provide a dynamic balance of
summative and formative feedback. This feedback was used to shape (1) the
classroom’s social learning of the shared literary practices, (2) each student’s
individual learning of the underlying concepts and skills, (3) the teacher’s
learning to enact and refine the module, and then (4) the researcher’s learn-
ing about the module’s impact on achievement. This collaboration yielded a
more fully articulated approach to assessment that is introduced in this paper.
The approach that emerged from these earlier efforts is called participa-
tory assessment. This approach assumes that assessment is the key for
transforming teaching because assessment forces tacit assumptions about
knowing and learning to the surface. This approach is inspired by new situ-
ative views of assessment that assume a much broader view of learning
than conventional behavioral and cognitive theories (Gee, 2003; Greeno &
Gresalfi, 2008). As such, they lead to a much broader view of what counts
as “assessment” (Hickey & Anderson, 2007). This broader view blurs the
distinction between “instruction” & “assessment” and argues that all learning
involves assessment. This broader view also blurs the widely-held distinction
between “summative assessment” (i.e., assessment of learning) and “forma-
tive assessment” (assessment for learning). Crucially for our wider goals,
participatory approaches to assessment highlight the broader “transformative”
functions of assessment. This view of “assessment as learning” assumes that
assessment practices can and do create entirely new learning ecosystems.
This new assessment-driven ecosystem for participatory learning presents
the teacher professional development goals and challenges that are the focus
of this paper.
At the start of the more recent collaboration to be described in this paper,
the participatory assessment approach was organized around four general
assessment design principles.
Let contexts give meaning to concepts and skills. This means fostering
increasingly sophisticated, communal discourse around valued concepts and
skills by considering how this knowledge gets its meaning from the contexts
in which it is used.
Assess reflections rather than artifacts. This means protecting participa-
tion by not directly evaluating the artifacts that students create in assignments
or projects.
Downplay classroom assessments. This means protecting engagement
by using formal (i.e., on demand) assessments primarily for assessing and
improving the curriculum (rather than students’ knowledge).
Isolate achievement tests. This means protecting curricula by using external
tests primarily to assess the impact of the curriculum-assessment ecosystem
on conventional academic knowledge.

Reflecting contemporary design based research (DBR) methods (e.g., Kali,
2006), these general principles are transformed into more specific principles
by designing specific features in particular instructional contexts. As such, our
approach to professional development so far has been intensive collaboration
with a handful of select teachers to carry out this transformation.
Our approach to participatory professional development has been shaped
by what Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli (2011) labeled design-based
implementation research (DBIR). DBIR highlights the crucial role of teacher-
collaborators and classroom implementations. Through iterative refinement of
the modules, we are producing a coherent set of resources whose features
embody specific design principles across a range of topics and activities. By
involving teachers in the process, we also create resources that real teachers
can use in real classrooms. We are collecting evidence of achievement gains
using rigorous designs and methods primarily to show that participatory learn-
ing can impact achievement. We are also using achievement measures to
track increased impact as we go forward.
Our approach to professional development also draws from studies of
the way new ideas “spread” in some digital networks and “die” in others
(Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2012). We think of the curricula we develop and
the principles they embody as “spreadable educational practices” (Hickey,
2010) which can and should be adapted and refined for particular contexts.2010) which can and should be adapted and refined for particular contexts.
This notion of spread is directly reflected in our collaborations with teach-
ers. For example, researchers and teachers work together to write reflections
embedded in the modules, which are carefully worded and sequenced to
help teachers see learning in terms of “trajectories” of participation (Lave &
Wenger, 1991). These reflections anchor discussions of abstract concepts
and isolated skills to more concrete contexts. This gives struggling students
sufficient experience with the curricular context to participate meaningfully
in more advanced and more abstract conversations. This also discourages

students from attempting to memorize concepts that they are unprepared to
understand, or mindlessly practicing isolated skills in order to reproduce them
on a classroom assessment.
EXPANDED GOALS FOR TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
A 2009 federal grant for dozens of netbook computers provided an oppor-
tunity to expand the earlier collaboration to roughly a dozen high school
language arts teachers in two area school systems. We expanded beyond
implementing and refining Project NML’s modules to creating new modules
using participatory assessment. Some of these collaborations were more
successful than others. In particular, some of the teachers wanted to incorpo-
rate our new curricular resources and features into very traditional instruction.
These teachers were more inclined to treat participation as another set of
concepts and skills for them to teach alongside the existing content. As such,
they generally resisted our efforts to transform their existing curriculum or
implement new modules in ways in ways that would “invite participation.”
Generally speaking, it was clear that the underlying goals of our approach
were still too tacit and needed to be made more explicit if more teachers were
to take up our approach more readily.
Our observations pointed to specific goals that needed to be more explic-
itly represented in our professional development efforts. For example, our
first participatory assessment design principle (let contexts give meaning to
concepts and skills) encourages classrooms to look beyond concepts and
skills to their contexts-of-use. This is intended to generate shared contextual
knowledge that is relevant to learning more abstract concepts. Our strategy
is to support knowledgeable participation in discourse around the appro-
priate uses of concepts and skills in particular contexts. The goal here is
helping teachers appreciate that this shared contextual knowledge develops
more easily (and naturally) because it is informal and concrete, whereas the
concepts and skills are formal and abstract. But we found that some teach-
ers had a tendency to explain appropriate and inappropriate uses well before
many students had enough experience to comprehend what the teachers
meant. This suggested that one of our professional development goals was
providing more useful examples of this “context x concept” discourse and
convincing them to give students experiences using concepts in contexts,
rather than teaching students about those concepts.
Another set of professional development goals concerned three very specific
types of participatory reflections that had emerged in the prior studies:
consequential engagement (“what were the consequences of this concept

in this context?”), critical engagement (“was this a good context for learning
this concept?”) and collaborative engagement (“how were your classmates’
contexts helpful for learning this concept?). In the prior studies, these had
proven quite useful for fostering participation in shared discourse that would
indirectly foster conceptual understanding and overall achievement. The
elaboration of the first participatory assessment design principle (foster
increasingly sophisticated communal discourse) emphasizes that students
need to first encounter very informal (i.e., conversational) versions of these
reflections when activities are being introduced. This prepares students for
semi-formal (written but ungraded) versions of those same questions once
the activity is under way. We observed that some teachers would phrase the
informal reflections as “known answer” questions. Not surprisingly, rather
than engaging in interactive discourse, these students tended to respond
with the “answers” to the reflections, which they would then simply restate
for the semi-formal reflections. We also observed that other teachers would
allow more experienced students to quickly take the informal reflections into
very abstract characterizations of the concepts that were meaningless and
overwhelming to the less experienced students. This inspired a much clearer
articulation of the discursive goals of the reflections for subsequent teachers.
The formal (written and graded) reflections that students would complete once
the activity was completed are embodied in our second participatory assess-
ment design principle (assess reflections rather than artifacts). The related
professional development challenge that emerged was convincing teach-
ers that students must have or develop enduring understanding (Wiggins
& McTighe, 2005) of targeted concepts and skills in order to write coherent
consequential, critical, and collaborative reflections about their artifacts. While
this principle did not come “naturally” to any of the collaborating teachers,
some of them quickly saw the advantages of not directly grading artifacts or
performances. But some of the other teachers resisted, suggesting much
more work was needed in this regard.
Our most important professional development goal was helping teachers
appreciate how the curricular features across levels of learning work together
to serve the broader transformative goals. Less-formal participation at one
level is “protected” by the more formal participation at the next level. More
specifically, the third and fourth participatory assessment principles highlight
the way that formal classroom assessments can more directly assess endur-
ing understanding of concepts than student-created artifacts or performances.
The specific challenge here is convincing teachers that the discourse fostered
by artifact reflections can and likely will leave behind the understanding and
fluency that classroom assessments can more readily capture. Likewise, we
need to convince teachers that it is our job as designers and researchers to

make sure that the modules impact external achievement, and that we can’t
do that if they directly prepare students for tests by focusing excessively on
isolated associations.
CASE STUDIES OF CURRICULAR DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD
This section describes how this approach informed the creation of two new
secondary ELA modules. The first was developed via a collaboration between
the first and second authors, while the second author was still working as
a classroom teacher. The second module was developed via a collabora-
tion between the second author and another high school ELA teacher who
had been participating in the ongoing collaboration. In the interest of space,
our descriptions here will be necessarily brief. More information about both
modules and the actual resources are available at Digital Is, a website
sponsored by the National Writing Project, and at Common Core PLAnet
(Participatory Learning and Assessment Network).
Romeo and Juliet
The first module was developed and implemented in Spring 2011. The second
author, with an ME.D from a progressive training program, had already been
implementing elements of participatory learning in her high school English
classroom in Southern California. She had been accepted into the doctoral
program to join the research team headed by the first author. In advance of
that opportunity, she elected to implement participatory assessment in her
own classroom. Based on the several other examples that had previously
been developed, she built a module using custom resources and existing
open educational resources from the Internet that were aligned to a primary
and a secondary Common Core English standard (concerning character anal-
ysis and writing). The module consisted of four activities, including discussion
& role play, a mock trial, a digital poster, and a formal essay.& role play, a mock trial, a digital poster, and a formal essay.

For each activity in the module, increasingly formal reflections were collabora-
tively drafted by the two of us. Informal reflections were included before and
during each activity (e.g., How will/does using Romeo and Juliet impact the
way we learn to analyze characters?). Semi-formal reflections were included
after each activity (e.g., How was analyzing characters different in the role
play than the mock trial?). Formal artifact reflections asked students to reflect
on the things they produced in the activities (e.g., How did the characters
you analyzed in your essay impact what you learned about character analy-
sis?). For the entire module a curriculum-oriented assessment was created
to assess the impact on students’ understanding of character analysis as it
was represented in the Common Core standard. Finally, a standards-oriented
test was created using released items aligned to the targeted standards
but independent of the curriculum to discreetly estimate impact on external
achievement.
The module was implemented successfully in that (a) it was manageable
for both the teacher and students, (b) the reflections revealed increasingly
successful participation in increasingly formal discourse about the text and
the practices of character analysis, (c) the formal essay completed at the end
of the unit demonstrated adequate understanding of the concepts and fluency
with skills in the standard, (d) students excelled on the formal assessment,
and (e) scores increased significantly on the achievement test. Based on
that experience, the module has been refined and we are planning to have it
implemented again by a new teacher and study and evaluate it more formally,
along with some new professional development resources.
Learning the Art of Persuasion
The second module was developed in collaboration with Angie Cannon, a
high school ELA teacher. Working in close collaboration, Angie assembled
custom resources and networked open resources that were aligned to a
primary and secondary Common Core English standard. The module was
similar in structure to the first module, but targeted a different Common Core
standard, and used formal debates rather than a mock trial as the student
performance. Activities in the module included structured class discussions
about the standard, comparison and contrast of several recorded speeches
on YouTube, a formal debate, and transforming a research paper into a
persuasive speech.
As hinted above, some of the professional development associated with the
module took place during its collaborative creation. While assembling the
various parts, examples and anecdotes from the first module were used to
begin addressing the four goals outlined above. This second implementation

was successful in that Angie was able to effectively execute it. It would have
been premature to attempt to formally document our professional develop-
ment success with this module. But our conversations with Angie convinced
us that we accomplished the four goals outlined above. We found her char-
acterization of her initial reluctance to not grade the student speeches was
typical of many of the teachers we have worked with:
…the way I’ve always approached it in the past is that I’ve graded their
speech. I’ve graded them on their presentation and how they handle them-
selves in front of people,…their use of persuasive techniques--you know, if
you used this many persuasive techniques in your speech then, you get this
certain score.
While she had recognized that it usually didn’t work very well, she had
persisted nonetheless:
…they didn’t always do so well with that, obviously, because they’re fifteen or
sixteen years old. [But] I was concerned that if they knew that I wasn’t going
to be grading their speech that they wouldn’t try. They wouldn’t worry about
making a decent speech.
Angie’s description of what happened when she only graded the reflections
on their speeches nicely captured the overall goals of participatory assess-
ment:
I think it was kind of nice that they had the pressure off of them a little bit, and
the kids still had to be able to recognize techniques by watching the other
speeches. And I think that having the pressure taken off, that this is, that their
grade is dependent on their ability to do this thing that is nearly impossible for
most average fifteen year olds, sixteen year olds helped them do a little bit
better.
Finally, her comments convinced us that she appreciated our suggestion
that students need to understand the concept in the standards in order to
complete the formal reflections:
When they answered the reflection questions … especially this one: “Match
each speech device with the debate topic that was best suited for illustrat-
ing that device and explain why (claim, appeal to authority, rational appeal,
emotional appeal)” I was able to see with that question right away, do they
understand those, do they get those devices?
What made the overall case study a success for Angie is that all of the
students’ performed adequately on curriculum-oriented formal assessment,
and some did quite well. What made the “curriculum-assessment ecosystem”

a success for us as researchers was that the gains on the standards-oriented
achievement test were statistically significant.
FUTURE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS
At this time we are continuing to work with several collaborating teachers
while pursuing the external support needed to expand our efforts. While our
current collaborative approach is working for some teachers, it is quite labo-
rious, and has not worked very well for other teachers. We are currently
developing more formal professional development resources needed to
prepare new teachers who join our network and foster their collaboration with
the teacher(s) with whom we originally developed the modules. Our approach
to teacher learning also embraces participatory learning.
These insights and other ideas articulated in Jenkins and Kelly (in press)
are being incorporated into a range of professional development resources.
These include:
• Self-paced tutorials that illustrate the specific (but narrow) role of highly struc-
tured expository resources.
• Inquiry-based investigations that help teachers uncover their existing (and
likely tacit) beliefs about learning so that those beliefs can be discussed and
transformed.
• Small projects that let teachers experience the way that informal and semi-
formal reflections can prompt consequential, critical, and collaborative
engagement.
• Sample formal assessments that let teachers experience how the knowl-
edge they gain about participatory learning is only weakly represented in that
context, and is a very incomplete representation of what they might be able to
do in their own classroom.
• Example achievement tests that will help teachers appreciate how such
contexts call on narrow procedural and factual knowledge, and can’t provide
valid evidence of social or technological practices.
By embedding these and other resources within a broader professional devel-
opment network, we can show teachers how the full value of any educational
resource can only be realized when they are appropriately situated within a
networked community of learners.
Our ultimate goal is creating digital professional development networks that
are dedicated to participatory and transformative assessment in particular
domains. It is crucial that we develop technology supports so that newcomers

can more readily observe and begin participating in this collaborative design
process.
Acknowledgements:
This paper describes work that was supported by MacArthur Foundation and
U.S. Department of Education. Michelle Honeyford and Jenna McWilliams
were essential collaborators on the research we describe. We thank our lead
teacher collaborators Angie Cannon and (especially) Becky Rupert. Thanks
to James Gee and the members of the 21st Century Assessment project, and
to Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Erin Reilly, Wyn Kelly, and our other collabo-
rators at Project New Media Literacies. Henry Jenkins, Barry Fishman, Ioana
Literat, and Troy Hicks provided invaluable feedback on an earlier version of
this paper. For more information, dthickey@indiana.edu and rcitow@indiana.
edu.
Daniel T. Hickey is an Associate Professor and Program Head in the Learn-
ing Sciences Program at Indiana University. He studies situative and
participatory approaches to instruction, assessment, and motivation, mostly in
the context of new learning technologies. He has led projects funded by the
MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the US Department
of Education, and NASA. He can be reached at dthickey@indiana.edu
Rebecca C. Itow is a Ph.D. student in the Learning Sciences department at
Indiana University. Prior to joining the research team at IU, she taught high
school English at a public school in Southern California. Her interests include
participatory curricula development and designing models of and resources
for participatory professional development. She can be reached at rcitow@
indiana.edu.

SECTION THREE:
Design Principles for Participatory Models of
Erin Reilly

DESIGN GUIDE : p. 90
The first wave of work on new media and the classroom was indeed
technology-focused, as schools sought to ensure that every American child
had access to networked computing in the face of a persistent digital divide.
We have been largely successful in this task, with recent research suggest-
ing that as many as 95 percent of American school-aged children now have
digital access. But the downfall of this success was that teacher professional
development became increasingly centered on defining digital literacy by
offering workshops on specific applications to use in the classroom. A tech-
nology-based solution will simply result in an arms-race where each school
spends more and more of its budget on tools, while stripping bare the human
resources (teachers, librarians) who might help students learn how to use
those tools in ethical, safe, and creative ways.
Beyond tackling the digital divide, we need to devote resources to resolving
the participation gap, which refers to access to core skills, knowledge, and
learning experiences required to more fully engage with this emerging land-
scape. In practice, many of the core skills needed to join a networked society
can be taught using low-tech, non-networked technologies or no-tech means,
even if schools have grossly uneven access to core technologies. However,
teachers need to feel comfortable implementing these innovative pedagogies,
and for this, they must have access to the most valuable and relevant profes-
sional development opportunities.
We have come in contact with teachers who are curious about changing
technologies and teaching practices. For example, many teachers question
if Facebook should have a place in the classroom and others wonder how
Twitter can be used to have students collectively explore character develop-
ment or deepen classroom discussions with an extended community. With
so many choices available online, one of the hardest choices for teachers is
to determine which resources to use and how to embed them effectively into
their learning objectives.
Curiosity is an excellent first step toward participatory learning. It invokes
a habit of messing around and experimenting with a resource. However,
for participatory learning to be infused into the daily ritual of the classroom,
curiosity requires mentoring —well-designed, creative professional develop-
ment is needed to sustain teachers’ curiosity and motivation, connect them
Design Principles for Participatory Models
of Professional Development
Erin Reilly

to others within communities of practice, and provide them with paths to the
resources they need.
The working group has suggested a design guide for professional develop-
ment in the 21st century. The design guide outlines five design principles
that facilitators of professional development should consider when creating
professional development (PD) experiences for teachers. Each of the design
principles encourages a deeper probing of developing environments and
practices that support and sustain participatory learning. The guide also iden-
tifies challenges and how to assess these new forms of PD for administrators
to consider when selecting professional development opportunities for the
teachers in their schools or districts.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR PARTICIPATORY MODELS OF PROFES-
SIONAL DEVELOPMENT
What follows is constructed to inform the future design of professional devel-
opment. Our focus on PD is not a consumer-based, push-out model made up
of one-off workshops that have limited impact on a daily classroom’s learning
objectives. Instead, we seek PD experiences that encourage all to contribute,
share their expertise and participate in professional learning communities for
lasting influence in this professional domain. This set of design principles are
technology agnostic and emphasize cultural practices and mental dispositions
that adapt easily to changes in practices, resources and opportunities.
1. Engage in participatory design of PD
It is important first to make the design of professional development participa-
tory. PD designers should reconsider coming to the PD teaching experience
willing to let go of some control in order to respect the expertise teachers
bring to the experience. The PLAY Pilot case study exemplifies this practice.
PLAY! facilitators refused to assume the position of expert by unilaterally
teaching participants any given technology. They challenged participants
instead to reflect on their discrete lesson’s learning goals, identify tools that
might help meet those goals, search for and locate those tools, learn how to
use them through play, and incorporate or reject according to the tools’ poten-
tial. When time permitted, facilitators also sat down beside participants and
joined them as co-learners in the process of pursuit and discovery.
PLAY’s Summer Sandbox was designed to honor teachers’ identities and
interests. During the week, teachers were encouraged to design mini-work-
shops shared in an un-conference style. From the workshops themselves,
teachers benefited by exchanging tips and resources, engaging in the
Erin Reilly (CONTINUED)

dialogues that they cared most about, and basking in the respect that shared
control implies. This means that inherent in the design of the professional
development model are opportunities for participants to offer their insights,
hear opposing views, and generally add to and glean information from the
collective knowledge pool.
2. Model participatory learning in PD
A participatory learning environment often looks very different than a tradi-
tional learning environment. Often, when adults reflect on their past learning
experiences, their memories of where and when learning occurred in their
lives extends beyond the boundaries of their childhood classroom. In reflec-
tion, it is apparent that learning happens “anytime, anywhere” and what helps
shape who we are is the interest-driven communities participated in through-
out our lives. The Vital Signs case study clearly demonstrates the importance
of non-traditional learning and the importance of stepping beyond the class-
room and into the physical spaces of learning: the lakes, rivers and bogs that
enable Vital Signs participants to embody the role of a scientist.
Many of the educators who sign on
to Vital Signs are initially unfamil-
iar with teaching practices that
support science learning that is
outside, online, and connected
to a community of practice.
Educators must facilitate team-
work and communication, foster
evidence-based reasoning, encour-
age play, and embrace the messiness
of scientific practice. To help educators make
these practices familiar, and to help them imagine their students learning
science differently, the VS team models for them the learning environment
they hope educators will create for their students. Educators are active
participants in institutes. They learn by doing, experiencing, contributing, and
playing in ways that translate directly into classroom practice.
It is important to model participatory learning in professional development and
to support new approaches for teachers and students to co-learn in the class-
room. We must close the gap between after-school and in-school, and build
an awareness that participatory culture has a place in these long-established
learning systems.
Many of the educators who sign on
to Vital Signs are initially unfamil-
evidence-based reasoning, encour-evidence-based reasoning, encour-evidence-based reasoning, encour
age play, and embrace the messiness
of scientific practice. To help educators make

3. Build community
A participatory environment reflects the community it serves. This means
that we must build a community of participants who support, encourage, and
engage with one another. Looking to the definition of participatory culture
given by Jenkins et al. (2006), we can see characteristics of a community
that supports participatory learning. Building a professional development
community suggests that everyone contributing to the learning experience
-- teachers, administrators, students, policy makers and parents -- needs to
work together to foster participatory learning. When communities of learn-
ers pool their knowledge towards a common goal, they develop conventional
academic knowledge in combination with newer networked knowledge such
as the social skills, ethical values and cultural competencies needed to be full
participants in today’s rich media landscape. The quickening pace of tech-
nological change means that we can barely envision the actual contexts in
which our students will use what they are learning in school. Reflected in the
ScratchEd case study, the most important part of building community is offer-
ing a variety of situations for teachers to participate.
More than 5000 educators have joined ScratchEd in the first two and a half
years since its launch in August 2009, and educators have shared hundreds
of stories and resources, as well as asked and answered thousands of ques-
tions. To accompany the ScratchEd online community activities, there are
face-to-face and online gatherings where teachers can gain a deeper under-
standing of Scratch and constructionist approaches to learning; these include
monthly introductory workshops for educators new to Scratch, meetups for
educators with some Scratch experiences, and webinars that are recorded
and shared on ScratchEd. Finally, there are resources for teachers to use
when introducing Scratch to students and when conducting workshops for
their colleagues.
Many examples of professional learning communities show that establishing
a digital network is an important piece of the experience. The online portion
allows for user-generated content. But, the online network is only one part
of a blended online / offline experience that should also offer a hyperlocal
experience to professional development. Hyperlocal reflects the importance
of geography and time. This gives teachers opportunities to meet fellow
colleagues within their own school or geographical location for an on-the-
ground support-system with peer mentoring and hands-on instruction. It
also extends asynchronous sharing common in digital networks to real-time
participation where physical cues from participants can shape unpredictable
directions for deeper discussions and reflections.

4. Engage the “whole teacher”
Who enters the teaching profession for money? Passion for their students,
discipline, and the sharing of knowledge drives people to become teachers.
But too often, the pressures of high stake tests, lack of administrative support
and an increase in student discipline problems stress teachers out to the point
where passion begins to run on fumes. We believe professional develop-
ment programs must engage the whole teacher, making sure not to create
extra work, but design a model so that professional development becomes
part of the work. Needless to say, this is a daunting transformation for school-
ing in general and particularly for teachers that are already heavily burdened.
Economics, Government and Yearbook teacher Isabel Morales shares in her
case study the importance of respecting teachers as professionals.
Professional development should not be painful, nor should it feel like a
waste of time to its participants. Just as teachers have been encouraged
to move away from the “banking method” of teaching, facilitators of profes-
sional development should also move towards a more engaging, participatory
model. Both PLAY! and “California on My Honor” provide successful models
of professional development that invite teachers to be active co-creators of
relevant and creative learning experiences. Administrators and developers
of professional development would be wise to follow the example of these
successful programs, and should aim to create meaningful, long-term oppor-
tunities for teachers to share resources and support one another.
5. Be relevant while still innovating
As digital media, tools and resources are brought into the new socio-cultural
and technological “loop,” humans are enabled to do new kinds of things, and
in the process to develop new capacities. Professional development would be
more productive and relevant to teachers if it were designed from an under-
standing of the inherent openness and diversity of human capacity.
Conventional views of learning and teaching have left teachers and students
most comfortable with structured activities that present well-defined content
that successful students can confidently reproduce on classroom assess-
ments. And teachers are increasingly pressured to directly increase scores
on standardized achievement tests, which often lead to dreary test prep and
“interim” assessments. In most K-12 settings, the crush of heavy teaching
loads limit the informal sharing and mentoring that most other profession-
als take for granted, and which facilitate prior transformations in most other
information-based industries. But we are confident that this transformation of
schooling will occur and in part due to researchers and practitioners pushing
the boundaries of existing models. Daniel Hickey and Rebecca Itow’s case

study, for instance, illustrates this shift:
Our approach to participatory professional development has been shaped
by what Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli (2011) labeled design-based
implementation research (DBIR). DBIR highlights the crucial role of teacher-
collaborators and classroom implementations. Through iterative refinement of
the modules, we are producing a coherent set of resources whose features
embody specific design principles across a range of topics and activities. By
involving teachers in the process, we also create resources that real teach-
ers can use in real classrooms. We are collecting evidence of achievement
gains using rigorous designs and methods primarily to show that participatory
learning can impact achievement. We are also using achievement measures
to track increased impact as we go forward.
We believe shifts in professional development are already underway. The
signs are everywhere; they can be seen in teachers’ increasing friendship-
driven and interest-driven professional networks (e.g., Greenhow, 2007;
Classroom 2.0, Digital Is, ConnectedLearning.tv), increasing online teacher
education programs (Dede et al., 2009) and the growing pool of open educa-
tion resources: digital materials available through an open license to be
re-used for teaching and learning (OERs, such as PLAYground) and open-
source content management systems (e.g., Moodle, Wordpress, and Sakai).
Simply put, schools cannot remain the only information-based industry that
is not transformed by the way that knowledge is created and shared in digital
networks.

6. PD must be flexible
Given the affordances of an information age, where we can easily access
and process data on a need-to-know basis, the learning that needs to happen
today is more conceptual and reflective. Teachers benefit more from flexible
structures that offer time and space for bringing new types of learning, such
as gaming, into the classroom. Take for example Antero Garcia’s case study
that highlights how, Ask Anansi, an alternate reality game (ARG) that allows
students and teachers to role-play by investigating real-world challenges
based on classroom curriculum can be used in PD as well.
Ask Anansi seeks to inform teacher professional development via direct inter-
action with students and student expertise. This participatory model draws on
Salen and Zimmerman’s (2004) definition of Transformative Social Play:
Transformative Social Play forces us to reevaluate a formal understand-
ing of rules as fixed, unambiguous, and omnipotently authoritative. In any
kind of transformative play, game structures come into question and are
re-shaped by player action. In transformative social play, the mechanisms
and effects of these transformations occur on a social level. (p. 475)
It is important to note that the shift in focus that occurs via transformative
social play occurs for both student and teacher. Through teacher collabora-
tion, discussion, and group provocation, teacher PD moves from rote lectures
to participatory development. Likewise, Ask Anansi is rooted in Youth Partici-
patory Action Research (YPAR) as a method of shifting teacher PD from
adult-driven to adult-facilitated.
This is an example of a mix of face-to-face and networked interaction for
teachers and students to learn from each other based on their own level of
development and preparedness rather than teachers structuring everyone’s
progress into a fixed sequence. Offering game play in professional devel-
opment allows teachers to take on different roles. For teachers new to the
experience, it offers a chance to legitimately observe and participate peripher-
ally as they assess the opportunities and give them time to better understand
the new situation, acclimate to the community and find a space where they
feel they can contribute (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

7. PD must be sustainable
Professional Development would also be served if it was situated within
communities where time can extend beyond the traditional structures of a
classroom, influence and belonging can extend beyond the local and shared
knowledge can allow for remixing and building upon others’ knowledge rather
than re-inventing and working in silos. Many of the case studies exemplify
sustainability by incorporating online communities as part of their activities.
But critical to the success and sustainability of participatory models of PD is
the ability to be part of the larger educational conversation happening.
Critical to the success of Vital Signs PD is an intimate understanding of the
present education landscape in Maine, and an awareness of the opportuni-
ties and challenges facing educators. GMRI’s involvement in state policy
conversations and relationships built with classroom teachers and state
education leaders make Vital Signs especially relevant to Maine educators.
Not only does participatory models of PD include being part of state and
national policy discussions, about it also includes involving external part-
ners in the program. Each of the case studies represented in this anthology
provide good representation of inviting information, skills, and experiences
that mean something in the “real world” into the learning experience. Vital
Signs connects teachers and students to actual scientists who use data
collected in their research. The ScratchEd model encourages locality with
replication of meet-ups and ScratchEd conferences throughout the world.
Dan Hickey and Rebecca Itow’s research offers an interdisciplinary collabo-
ration with assessment researchers, curriculum developers, and high school
English teachers coming together to make change. And an extension of the
Summer Sandbox, PLAY! invited community partners to participate in the
PD. Teachers could choose to participate in at least one of three PLAY On!
programs held after-school and/or on Saturdays as an extension to the one-
week intensive.
These types of extensions for teachers makes professional development
participatory, builds sustainability, encourage a sense of community and
makes transparent the vast knowledge and expertise available throughout
the learning ecosystem.

SECTION FOUR:
Conclusion
Henry Jenkins

CONCLUSION : p. 99
The participatory model of professional development builds upon previ-
ous work around teacher training and mentorship, as well as work on
integrating media into learning environments. At the same time, it repre-
sents a substantial shift away from traditional models for adult learning. In
addition to raising questions about how to do professional development, the
participatory model also pushes the question of why do professional devel-
opment—what are the desired or anticipated outcomes of participatory
professional development, and how do they differ from those of traditional
PD?
As the case studies presented in this paper demonstrate, professional devel-
opment that embraces participatory models of learning is hands-on, creative
and critical, and relevant to the interests and needs of the learning commu-
nity. Done well, professional development is an essential tool for recognizing
and fostering teachers’ expertise—not just delivering information about
specific content or methods, but providing mentorship and support. Crucially,
it treats teachers with respect and recognizes the wealth of knowledge and
experience that each teacher possesses.
In addition to the examples represented in this collection, a number of other
initiatives exist across the country to provide training in participatory learn-
ing for pre-service and in-service teachers; these initiatives tend to focus on
empowering teachers to design and use digital media and technology in their
classrooms.
For example, the online Masters of Arts in Teaching program run by the
Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California (MAT@
USC) provides a hybrid approach to pre-service teacher training. Students
from across the country complete coursework toward a MAT degree through
a combination of self-paced online work and live face-to-face meetings with
faculty and classmates via group video conference. These hybrid interactions
in the MAT@USC program contribute to its participatory nature. In contrast
to other online courses, which rely on text-based, asynchronous communica-
tion between student and instructor, the MAT@USC program uses media to
support participatory learning.
For in-service teachers, the DTC Lab run by New Visions for Public Schools
and supported by the Ford Foundation provides participatory professional
development by bringing teachers, designers, and technologists together
to collaborate on creating innovative digital tools for learning in and outside
of school. Their three-step design process--ideation, concepting, and proto-
typing--exemplifies co-learning, relying on the unique strengths of each
Future Directions for
Research and Development

CONCLUSION : p. 100
participant and treating everyone in the group as both an expert and a learner.
Future research and development around participatory models of profes-
sional development should continue to focus on how to provide innovative
and meaningful PD opportunities within varying educational contexts. This will
involve facilitating community building in co-located, online, and hybrid spaces
in order to better understand how factors like interdisciplinarity, longevity, or
interest-driven learning can affect the outcomes of participatory professional
development. In addition, future R&D should make sustainability of profes-
sional development a top priority; for example, it should consider alternative
strategies for funding and scheduling professional development, in order to
improve opportunities for long-term, meaningful participation.
One of the key concerns raised by teachers in the present project and in
much of the literature on professional development is time--how to fit experi-
mentation and exploration with new methods and media into an already
overloaded schedule. Considering ways to balance efficiency in training and
implementation of new practices with the often messy and iterative nature of
participatory learning is, therefore, of primary importance in future research
and development. As the cases presented in this paper demonstrate, profes-
sional development that speaks to the “whole teacher” by valuing and
leveraging practices that are already a part of their teaching and/or everyday
media use, can be much more valuable and empowering than professional
development that attempts a total replacement of existing practices.
In addition to these practical questions about how to engage more teach-
ers in participatory professional development, future work in this area should
also continue to attend to questions about why professional development is
important. For instance, research investigating teachers’ needs in relation to
participatory learning at different points in their careers could provide impor-
tant insights to shape a philosophy of professional development. Similarly,
research related to differences in participatory learning at various points in
a students’ K-12 experience--thinking about how developmental and socio-
cultural factors shape students’ beliefs, abilities, preferences, etc. at different
ages--could assist in understanding and designing for teachers’ specific
needs from professional development.
Rebecca Herr-Stephenson (CONTINUED)

CONCLUSION : p. 101
As we look to the future of professional development, participatory
models will transform the core aspects of our current educational model.
We will move from a model of “teacher training” to the model of co-created,
co-facilitated learning. This new model will respect the challenges teachers
face as they bring new media literacies into the classroom and over come the
demands that constrain their ability to perform their jobs or block them from
sharing meaningful insights specific to the lives of their students. Despite
precarious employment as underfunded schools cut programs to stay in
operation, despite discouragement from collaborating across disciplines or
opening their doors to a larger community, despite the fear of students using
school computers for joining networks, this new model will enable teachers –
and students – to engage in the core practices of a participatory culture.
Some might want to blow up the schools and start over, but those who work in
schools do not have that option. The new model will help teachers find ways
to make schools work for themselves, for their communities, and for their
students. And this means that, for the short turn, they may have to work under
conditions that are far from perfect. To make a difference, we must bring this
new model to educators in ways that respect what the teachers themselves
bring to the process, even as we propose new ways for reshaping familiar
practices.
Some students have access to rich, diverse communities that reward their
participation and support their learning. Many lack access to the technologies
that might allow them to enter such communities outside of the equipment
provided by schools and public libraries. Many lack access to adult mentors
who understand the challenges of the online world, who can help connect
them to valuable resources and experiences, and who can help them connect
and mobilize what they are learning outside of school so that they can
perform better in the classroom. Any move to embrace participatory practices
in the classroom must start with recognizing the uneven opportunities for
students to participate in the new model. Educators have a vital role to play in
helping everyone acquire the skills they need for future participation.
Approaches to participatory learning (for teachers and students) need to be
grounded in core social skills and cultural competencies, not tied to specific
tools and platforms that shift from year to year. The focus should be on the
collaborative production of culture, not, say, Second Life, which has followed
the ebb and flow of other digital platforms. The focus should be on helping
young people think through the challenges of networked communications. At
the same time, professional development programs should be designed so
they can be appropriated and remixed by teachers so they can be inserted
into the context of their working lives. PD should not be an added burden; PD
should help teachers rethink the tasks they are already performing.
Conclusion
Henry Jenkins

CONCLUSION : p. 102
Time – The activities and approach proposed here must work in relation to
the temporal structures of current teaching. They can demand no more class-
room time than those they are replacing because teachers have no more time
to give. They should be taught in ways that are connected to the work teach-
ers are already doing and should unfold on a schedule that is humane and
doable. Professional development is ideally experienced as a break in routine
– a chance to enter into a new kind of mental and social environment that
refreshes and renews educators’ commitments to their profession.
Place – Again, the approach must be flexible enough to be incorporated into
a variety of school settings. It should acknowledge the teachers’ understand-
ing of their own environment best and how to adopt what they learn to the
local and particular needs of their students. The approach should also recog-
nize that the digital world represents an opportunity to extend the borders
of the classroom, to bring new resources into the pedagogical process, to
connect learners and teachers into new kinds of networks and communities.
The goal should be to blur the lines between physical and online interactions
in order to extend the points of contact and the variety of contacts between
teachers, mentors, and learners. There should be multiple pathways into
participation for teachers – from fandom to gaming – which will offer multiple
goals, multiple modes of success, and multiple forms of engagement.
Identity – Many traditional forms of “teacher training” threaten the teacher’s
identities as professionals who bring a life time of experience to the profes-
sional development process. Teachers need the support of a community that
respects what they already know as it offers them a chance to broaden their
pedagogical repertoire and expand the models of learning they deploy with
their students. Teachers need emotional support, to realize they are not shed-
ding their professional identities as they empower their students to find their
own expertise and take greater control over their own learning. Before they
can embrace this new role in their classroom, they need to experience the
classroom environment as learners. If we can provide that impetus, we can
better help them embrace participatory learning practices. They must be able
to make core decisions that help identify their own learning goals, to share
their own experiences and passions, and to shape the outcomes of a process
that fits their own working experiences.
New media literacies should not be viewed as an added subject but as a
paradigm shift that changes the ways we think about the entire curriculum.
The pay-off of such a dramatic change should not be short term nor transitory;
it should be integral to professional identity. Those who are in the business
of reimagining pedagogy need to work together, as we have in this project, to
identify core principles and best practices that can help guide the process of
transition.
Conclusion
Henry Jenkins (CONTINUED)

SECTION FIVE:
Working Group Members
Henry Jenkins PLAY! (USC Annenberg)
Erin Reilly PLAY! (USC Annenberg)
Ioana Literat PLAY! (USC Annenberg)
Vanessa Vartabedian PLAY! (USC Annenberg)
Laurel Felt PLAY! (USC Annenberg)
Akifa Khan PLAY! (USC Annenberg)
Anthony Maddox USC Rossier School of Education
John Pascarella USC Rossier School of Education
Brendesha Tynes USC Rossier School of Education
Stefani Relles USC Rossier School of Education
Stephanie McClay USC Hybrid High
Becky Herr-Stephenson PLAY! / Joan Ganz Cooney Center
Michael Levine Joan Ganz Cooney Center
Antero Garcia Manual Arts HS / UCLA
Mary Hendra Facing History and Ourselves
Jane Kagon Robert F Kennedy - Legacy in Action (RFK-LA)
Joel Rothblatt School of Visual Arts and Humanities, RFK-LA
Isabel Morales Los Angeles High School for the Arts, RFK-LA
Julie Van Winkle Logan Street School
Karolynne Gee Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts
Cathy Higgins New Hampshire Department of Education
James Bosco Western Michigan University
Dan Hickey Indiana University
Rebecca Itow Indiana University
Karen Brennan MIT Media Lab
Barry Fishman University of Michigan
Sarah Kirn Gulf of Maine Research Institute
Sarah Morrisseau Gulf of Maine Research Institute
Gayle Kolodny Cole Shoah Foundation Institute
Sherry Bard Shoah Foundation Institute
Kim Simon Shoah Foundation Institute
Kori Street Shoah Foundation Institute

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ERIN REILLY is Managing Director for Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC’s Annenberg School for Communi-
cations & Journalism. Her research focus is children, youth and media and the interdisciplinary, creative learning
experiences that occur through social and cultural participation with emergent technologies.
Having received multiple awards, such as Cable in a Classroom’s Leaders in Learning, Erin is a recognized expert
in the development of resources for educators and students and conducts field research to collect data and help
shape the field of digital media and learning. Erin was Research Director for Project New Media Literacies at
MIT and also has conducted classes as a Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Department and
Harvard University’s Project Zero Summer Institute.
She is most notably known for co-creating one of the first social media citizen science programs, Zoey’s
Room. Her current research-design projects include PLAY!, a new approach to learning that refers to
the value of play as a guiding principle in the educational process both in informal and formal spaces and
Flotsam, a transmedia play experience that is exploring joint media engagement between children and
their caregivers.
Reilly is a graduate of Emerson College and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Rockport College, a
subsidiary of the Maine Media Workshops.
She is a board member of NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Educators) and serves on
advisory boards, such as PBS Emmy-award winning Sci Girls and National Assessment of Educational
Progress where she is helping to develop the first technology and engineering literacy assessment.
Erin consults with private and public companies in the areas of mobile, creative strategy and transme-
dia projects for children and adults.
IOANA LITERAT is a doctoral student and Provost Fellow at the Annenberg School for Commu-
nication, University of Southern California. Her research—which currently centres on crowdsourced
art—examines participatory practices of collective creativity, as mediated by digital technologies. She has
received several awards for this research, including the Phi Kappa Phi Student Recognition Award from
the President of USC, and the Top Paper Award at the International Communication Association Annual
Conference in 2012.
Ioana graduated summa cum laudae from Middlebury College, with Highest Honors in Film and Media
Culture. She has been inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa academic society, and awarded the David I.
Goldman Prize for excellence in the study of film and media. Her professional background is in imple-
menting digital storytelling curricula and media literacy campaigns in international contexts. She has
taught filmmaking and social justice curricula to children in India, Uruguay, Romania, and the
Dominican Republic, and, prior to starting her doctoral studies, she worked as the field coordi-
nator of The Modern Story digital storytelling program, a grassroots project aiming to bridge
the digital divide by introducing media literacy and filmmaking workshops in government
schools in India.

Thank you to Becky Herr-Stephenson for her thoughtful review of the report;
Sophie Madej for helping us organize the two working group workshops; Henry
Jenkins for his guiding wisdom and experience; and to Jonathan Taplin for his
unwavering support.

This report and the two workshops held in 2011 that generated many of the ideas included herein
were made possible through a generous grant from the MacArthur-UCHRI Digital Media and Learning
Research Hub (http://dmlcentral.net/resources/5135) at the University of California, Irvine. Any opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation or the Regents
of the University of California. The two working group workshops and oversight of this research was
conducted at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.
This digital document is optimized for Adobe Reader 5 and above.
Download Reader for free at http://get.adobe.com/reader/
A full-text PDF of this report is available as a free download from
www.annenberglab.org
Reilly, E., & Literat, I. (2012). Designing with Teachers: Participatory Approaches to Profes-
sional Development in Education. Los Angeles California: Annenberg Innovation Lab at
University of Southern California.
© USC Annenberg Innovation Lab 2012.
Design provided by Daniel Rhone www.LUX-ID.com

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