Explanation

Co-designing teacher resources involved collaboratively developing, testing, and refining lessons to align with teachers’ contexts and students’ evolving needs. Through cycles of experimentation, reflection, and redesign, resources became more grounded in classroom realities.

Theory

Iterative pedagogical refinement draws on principles of design-based research which emphasize cycles of testing, feedback, and improvement (Brown, 1992; Collins et al., 2004; Edelson, 2002). By positioning teachers as co-designers within structured iterations, professional learning becomes a dynamic process where classroom insights, student responses, and peer feedback inform continuous adjustments.

Examples

In our work with early adopters, we received valuable feedback. Early adopters suggested that the educator guide be compiled into a single booklet rather than separately stapled sheets, so we consolidated all lesson plans and added sample lessons along with additional ideas teachers could implement in the classroom. Feedback also highlighted the need to refine some lessons. For instance, some students were confused by the word “wick.” Including a Nepali translation in brackets or labeling the “wick” in the student guide picture could have clarified this. In another example, when students were asked to think of real-world applications of chromatography, they struggled to come up with ideas, indicating a need for more scaffolding. They suggested adding a section in the student guide showing real-world uses, such as forensic applications popularized in TV shows like CID – a popular Hindi crime drama series, where chromatography can help test substances like blood or identify poisons. In response to such feedback, we focused on designing kits that supported free play while enabling meaningful learning, creating instruction sheets that allowed multiple outcomes and encouraged solution diversity, developing a teacher guide that offered opportunities to plan sessions with multiple variations, and producing videos that reduced preparation time for teachers.
In Phase III, we translated key resources, including the teacher and student guides, into Nepali. We also simplified complex language that students had struggled with in the previous phase. Providing the student guide in Nepali, the language most teachers and students in public schools in Gulmi and Hetauda are comfortable with, not only improved comprehension but also strengthened cultural connections, making the resources more accessible and relatable.
In Phase V, teachers were introduced to a sample lesson based on Cultural Modeling (Lee, 1993), which links academic concepts to students’ funds of knowledge from home and community experiences. To support this, they were provided with a lesson template that guided them in brainstorming ideas connecting target curriculum concepts with cultural datasets and familiar resources. This lesson template not only helped teachers plan lessons effectively but also demonstrated how academic learning can be meaningfully integrated with students’ everyday practices and cultural contexts.
Beyond providing lesson templates, we intentionally structured multiple layers of guidance, feedback, and revision to support meaningful iteration. In Phase IV, at Shramjit School, where the focus was on paper crafts, we introduced a pop-up card activity as an accessible entry point. However, the goal was not replication but progressive complexity. Kaushali began with this straightforward version, which students quickly replicated. She also documented student work through photographs and short reflections, which were shared in the PLC WhatsApp group and discussed in follow-up meetings. Inspired by online examples of more elaborate designs she shared with her students, gradually the students experimented with complex and creative projects, many of which are now displayed on the making space walls (Figure 29).