Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) approaches to intervention aim for transformative agency, that is, collective actions that expand and bring about new possibilities for activity. In this article, we draw on CHAT as a resource for organizing design research that promotes teachers’ agency in designing new science curriculum materials. We describe how CHAT informed our efforts to structure a collaborative design space in which teachers and other participants sought to develop new curriculum materials intended to help realize a new vision for science education. Specifically, we describe the tools and routines we deployed to support the design process, and we analyze the ways in which teachers took up elements of our design process as well as how they adapted, resisted, and suggested alternative tools and strategies to help develop new curriculum materials. In so doing, we illustrate ways in which CHAT can serve as a guide both for organizing collaborative design processes and for analyzing their efficacy.

In A Framework for K-12 Science Education, researchers call for teachers to make dramatic shifts in practice – and sustain in these changes in practice – so students can engage in rigorous and equitable three-dimensional science learning. Project-Based Learning (PBL) motivates students from diverse backgrounds to persist in learning. This project presents design features that bring together the assets of the Framework with PBL, and then tests these features to derive design principles that serve as commitments for designing for teacher change and student learning. Close ethnographic study of 10 teachers over 5 years in a design-based research study is triangulated with data collected across 41 districts in multiple states engaged in a PBL elementary science curriculum. The following design principles provide guidance for developing materials that support the depth necessary for promoting changes to teachers’ practice at scale: Adaptive, Responsive, and both Enjoyable and Intellectually Satisfying.

This paper examines the impacts of technology (e.g., Chromebooks, Google Drive) on teacher learning and student activity in the development and implementation of a deeply digital high school biolog...