1. CEP 917 Angie Johnson
Final Reflection
This final reflective piece synthesizes my attempt to internalize in a logical way the
theories, constructs, and concepts I have encountered in CEP 917. As a “big picture” person,
I am always inclined to draw independent thoughts into larger, more meaningful patterns.
So, in composing this piece, I have selected the most personally compelling ideas from my
reflections and logically reordered them in an attempt to present a personal argument for
the relevance of design theory to education. This is intended to be a logical progression of
ideas moving from preliminary to concomitant, from general to specific, and from
theoretical to applied. Each begins with a statement, followed by discussion of the concept
and its relation to the previous assertion.
The essential difference between ourselves and other species is that we can direct
our thoughts and attention.
I begin here because, as an educator and as a person, I am best motivated by essential
truths. This essential truth, that intentional thought is what makes us human, is one of the
most compelling assumptions on which I base my work as an educator. Educationhappens
through the practice of intentional thinking. Csikszentmihalyi described this direction of
psychic energy as flow, which requires not just the reception of sensory information, but
reflection on it as well. We must “perceive” rather than simply “recognize.” The better we
apply our human capacity to govern our minds, the more able we are to cultivate meaning
and ground ourselves in transactions that mediate the personal, social, and cosmic worlds.
This is why I view my primary role in education as “teaching kids how to be human.”
If directing our thoughts and actions with intention is what makes us human, then it
is through mindful action that we develop ourselves as persons in the world.
As Heidegger observed, I am because I act. ThichNhatHhan made a similar observation:
“My actions are my only true belongings.” Csikszentmihalyiasserts that freedom is
meaningless unless applied for a purpose, and I agree. It is important to be free, but equally
essential is that we act freely. Action requires choice; it requires we consider what we wish
to accomplish and why, and if we assume some goals, requires we consider how to act
productively and efficiently. The operative word here is “intention.” It is through
intentional action that we cultivate the self. And, interestingly, the cultivation of self is tied
to the cultivation of freedom, in a kind of reciprocal feedback loop. Csikszentmihalyiposits
that “To be free means to be free for some purpose. . . if we are free for some purpose, then
there is also a sense in which we are bound to that purpose . . . Pursued with all one’s
psychic energy, the process of cultivation would eventually compel the self to become free.”
Here is the idea of freedom combined with psychic energy, focused on cultivation of the self
in the context of individual, social, and cosmic experience. In short, if we are to be fully
human, we must seek, practice, and apply the freedom that is uniquely ours--we must act in
and on the world in purposeful ways.

2. CEP 917 Angie Johnson
To act on the world is to change it, and since design is the applied art of changing
things in the world, it is a way of being--through action--human.
In the design process we thoughtfully examine the world and our transactions with it,
determine ways our experience might be better, and attend to the work of making it so.
Simon articulated this quite clearly: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action
aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” In short, to design is to change
what is into what should be. In essence, design is an applied art, existing in the interface
between the material world and the desires of humans who live in it. It is about lubricating
the interface between the constraints of our environment and our goals for navigating
successfully and productively through it. We want to do things. Or go places. Or make
things. Or move things. And there’s always something in our way--the space between
where we are and where we want to go, the time and transformation required between
raw materials and finished product, the difference between the current order (or lack of it)
and the order we envision. Design is the applied art and science of minimizing those
roadblocks, or at least negotiating a compromise between them. In this way, good design
changes things. If our work is to act purposefully in the world, then design is a way to do
this. Finally, because education is by definition an attempt to change minds, design is
particularly relevant in the education setting. As a teacher my goal is always to transform
the minds of students, and any act of transformation is an act of changing what is into what
might be. So teaching is also an act of design.
The act of design has some important elements:
Design requires putting oneself, in the words of Dr. Punya Mishra, “in the way of
ideas.”
Good design seems to require this. In one sense, it’s a part of the idea-gathering process,
the early design stage of collecting perspectives and possibilities for the changes we seek to
make. There is an openness required here, a willingness to go outside one’s natural space
to view it as an outsider, a willingness to perceive possibilities rather than simply recognize
realities. By “finding ourselves in the margins” of perception we can “glimpse the obvious”
and “reframe the ordinary.” In other words...
Design requires we view the worldalternatively.
Hofstadter described creativity as a capacity to perceive and turn knobs to reorder known
elements in original ways. So, for example, we reexamine a situation that appears difficult,
and view it from a different perspective so as to maximize its affordances and minimize its
constraints. These knobs, which might be thought of as functions or uses or applications,
are perceived by most people in rather limited ways. But a creative designer adept at
perceiving alternatives may see and manipulate knobs that others do not, thereby solving a
problem in an original way. He may be adept at moving from one perspective to another to
leverage what is usually viewed as a constraint by reframing or repurposing it as an
affordance. He may perceive how an existing frame can be reapplied to a novel situation,
thereby utilizing the “slippage” from one discipline to another to his advantage. Each of

3. CEP 917 Angie Johnson
these requires the creator to see new ways, new patterns, new combinations. It also
requires the designer be able to see the world from the perspective of others. Therefore…
Design requires specific attention to the needs and intentions of the user.
Good design requires empathy for the user, in other words, designing with the user in
mind. The ability to view the world from a user’s point of view is essential. In my own
educational setting this means that I design for the benefit of my students, not for the
desires of administrators. I perceive where they are and design instruction to meet them
there. I have learned to teach with flexibility. I have a carefully considered instructional
plan, but I will turn on a dime for the very best instruction every single day. Doing so is an
outcome of the interaction between myself, my students, the space in which we work, the
content I teach, and a myriad of other environmental factors influencing our success at any
given moment. In other words…
Design is a conversation.
As I noted above, design happens in the space between user, product, materials, and
environment. It is a conversation among these elements. There is an exchange of energy, a
transaction between the elements. In practice the designer works in the space between all
of these, where the constraints and affordances of each meet up and are somehow
negotiated into a final product. One method of design that follows this precept is the design
method known as bricolage. The bricoleur tinkers or experiments with elements of a design
and reacts to success or failure along the way by adjusting and readjusting for a desired
outcome. In bricolage, design emerges from the process.
Design, then, is an active transaction between the desired outcome, the environment, the
materials, and the users. I must not only act, but I must react to the situational backtalk of
my classroom. Every class period is a new artistic creation, not just my own, but a collective
one that my students and I perform together. The content goals may to some extent be
determined at the outset, but the actualized content emerges organically from the process.
There is constant backtalk, or feedback. Always the backtalk is in part social, but it is also
dependent on the materials and tools with which we’re working. So, when we’re working
with technology, backtalk or feedback is technological, as Cossentino notes, a dialogue
between the student and the technology. When we’re conducting a Socratic Seminar, the
backtalk is verbal and sociocultural. And in any situation the backtalk is emotional as well;
as our emotional maps demonstrated, the user will be strongly influenced by her emotional
experience--and adolescents because of their developmental state, are more influenced by
their emotions than adults. The goal of the teacher, then, is to be a very good listener, a
careful observer, a true participant in the psychic exchange so as to enable the most
desirable change possible in this space.
Not only is design relevant to the work of teachers as they design instruction, but it is
also relevant to the work of students as they learn.
Because design is the “process of making sense” of a situation and constructing meaningful
solutions to the problems of human experience, it is a way of teaching and a way of
learning. So I am a teacher/designer, but I can teach students to “be human” by providing a

4. CEP 917 Angie Johnson
setting in which my students become student/designers themselves. Kafai reminds us of
Schon’s assertion that an "uncertain situation comes to be understood by the attempt to
change it." So, just as the teacher comes to understand how to best teach through the
design process, so might the student come to understand content through the process of
design.Kafai emphasizes constructionism as a subset of constructivism, noting that it
emphasizes creation of a concrete product; in other words, students "engage in
constructive activities that are meaningful to them," are in constant "dialogue with ideas"
as they design. In my own classroom this course inspired me to go a step farther than I
might normally have gone in transforming my classroom into a design studio. Having never
assigned a radio story, taught audio editing, or even used Audacity myself, I went ahead
and had my students do a radio story project and, in the process, witnessed their dialogue
among ideas, the medium, the technology, and each other. They were motivated not only by
the creative freedom granted them, but by the concrete product they envisioned as a result
of their efforts, a product they could share with others. I am reminded that design involves
interaction with things, returning us to Csikszentmihalyi’s transaction and things as
essential components of meaningful human interaction with the world. So, we teachers
conduct our work through design methods, but our students do the work of learning by
designing their own change in the world, acting as cultivated human beings.
Because educational research is, similarly, a process of problem-solving, it also
benefits from a design-based method.
Traditional research follows more positivist theories that reinforce a gap between theory
and practice in the messy real world. Design based research presents a solution to this
dilemma by studying and responding to real world challenges in authentic settings. The
researcher begins with an authentic problem, designs a solution to it, then applies and
studies that solution in situ. In keeping with the concept of design defined in the preceding
discussions, design based research is in part a conversation between the design solution
and all influencing factors in situ, thereby making it difficult if not impossible to reliably
isolate specific elements for evaluation. However, the degree of success in achieving
overarching goals can be measured just as any design is measured—for its effectiveness
and utility.
Successful design research in education may benefit from translational developers to
bridge the worlds of theory and practice.
Here the translational developer is one who can acquire the skills needed on both sides of
the theory-practice gap and communicate effectively between the sides involved. Norman
articulates this role:
Translational developers are needed who can mine the insights of researchers and hone them
into practical, reliable and useful results. Similarly translational developers must help
translate the problems and concerns of practice into the clear, need-based statements that
can drive researchers to develop new insights.
Here is where this theory applies to my experience as both a teacher and doctoral student.

5. CEP 917 Angie Johnson
Having taught for 23 years and completed a doctoral degree I will be familiar with the
discourse and perspectives of both sides. I imagine that my research will at some point lean
toward this design-based method, as challenging as it may be. My dissertation research will
take place in my own classroom with real students in the context of a genuine class, so in
this regard I hope to play the role of translational developer successfully.
Some General Thoughts, A.K.A. “A Blinding Glimpse of the Bloody Obvious”
I have not often been assigned a richer, more densely interwoven set of readings than we
read in this course. The ideas have literally enveloped my practice over the past several
months. And this past week I traveled to the Literacy Research Association conference for
the first time. I was struck by how wholly and completely that experience put me “in the
way of ideas,” and having marinated in design theory since September, I felt a shift in my
perception of that experience as well.
Participating in the discourse of this academic community reminded methat there is still
something very powerful about face-to-face interactions on shared topics of interest in a
shared physical space. It's Socratic dialogue again, the very method I teach so passionately
to my own students and that was the subject of my design project. It occurred to me then
that one reason I may be enjoying my classroom experience so well this year is that my
primary mission is to teach my students how to practice the exact habits of mind that I am
myself honing as a doctoral student. This academic community of intellectuals, their critical
response to one another's work, their way of being in the world of knowledge, is precisely
what we want our students to do. Inquire. Research. Theorize. Reflect. Consider opposing
viewpoints. Turn knobs. Utilize slippages. Express opinions. Listen for backtalk. Seek
evidence. Practice sound logic. Share willingly. See with a wide-angle lens. See with a zoom
lens. Take constructive criticism. Give it graciously and respectfully. Participate in the
discourse of the community. Contribute, even in a small way, to something outside oneself,
to the social evolutionary effort, to designing small but meaningful improvements in the
world.

6. CEP 917 Angie Johnson
References
Cossentino, J. and Shaffer, DW (1999). The math studio: harnessing the power of the arts to
teach across disciplines. Journal of Aesthetic Education 33(1).
Csikszentmihalyi, M., &Rochbert-Halton, E. (1981). The meaning of things: Domestic
symbols and the self. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Robinson, R. E. (1990). The art of seeing: An interpretation of the
aesthetic encounter. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Education Institution
for the Arts.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and
invention. New York: Harper Collins.
Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry. The Design-Based
Research Collective
Kafai Y. B. (1995). Minds in play: Computer game design as a context for children’s learning.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Norman, D. (2010). The Research-Practice Gap.Interactions Magazine. xvii(4).
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New
York: Basic Books.
Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.