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Prospects for Change at the Nexus of Policy and Design

Ben Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel; itabak{at}bgu.ac.ilHer research interests include designing technological supports for complex reasoning, particularly in science education, and studying interactions in naturalistic settings to understand the relationships between culture, identity, and subject-matter learning

Recent analyses point to the importance of communication and policy representation in understanding and fostering reform success. I propose adopting the idea of a pattern language(Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, Jacobson, Fiksdahl-King, & Angel, 1977) as a profitable direction for policy research on the design of policy documents. A pattern language is a comprehensive set of design elements that integrates abstract and concrete levels of description and notes the interconnections between these elements. In a reform document, the elements would be individual reform recommendations. It is argued that this form of representation, if adopted in standards-based reform documents, could facilitate the construction of shared meaning between policy-makers and reform-implementation agents, while sanctioning and guiding local adaptations that reflect the spirit of the reform

Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 2, 24-30 (2006)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X035002024


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