Doing and Sharing

We have now reached the penultimate stage in the 'Design for Change' process, the 'Do' phase, during which we have created a prototype to illustrate our idea. Design for Change (2016) break the 'Do' phase down into three steps; planning, implementing and reflecting. We completed these steps in class and subsequently developed our prototype; a resource for students to use to plan an overnight school trip based on the topic of Financial Capability. Throughout the creation of this resource, we ensured that an emphasis was placed on students being active in their learning. Arthur et al. (2006, p. 52) advocate the importance of active learning, writing that "...knowledge is therefore actively constructed by the learner rather than passively absorbed...". Indeed, through working together in groups, having to seek out information from different sources and communicate their findings with each other, I believe that all students, both high ability and low ability, will have the opportunity to actively take part in the completion of this project. This will hopefully serve to develop the confidence and motivation of all students, particularly amongst those who struggle with Mathematics and view the subject as irrelevant and boring.

Design for Change (2016) also assert the value of reaching out to organisations and professionals, who work in the same field, in order to obtain advice. As part of our research, therefore, we contacted Mathematics lecturers from our home universities in order to consider their opinions. During our last class in Innovation Lab, it was also particularly useful to be set up with some Mathematics students from UCC and to present our prototype to them. They provided us with extremely useful feedback and cautioned that the targets we had laid out in our resource for the children to reach were, perhaps, too high. We took this advice on board and adapted our resource appropriately in order to make the task more realistic and achievable for the students. After making some final changes to our resource, we will complete the last stage in the 'Design for Change' process when we present it to our peers during our final class on Tuesday.



The prototype we have developed for the students

Reference List

Arthur, J., Grainger, T. and Wray, D. (2006) Learning to Teach in the Primary School, Oxon, Routledge.

Design for Change (2016), available at http://www.dfcworld.com/fids.html#nogo (accessed 12/05/16).