Educational Design Research (EDR) emerged as a teacher professional inquiry approach in the 1990s (McKenney & Reeves, 2019). It is a process that involves teachers and researchers collaborating to research teaching and learning for the purpose of improving both teaching practice and theoretical understandings through cycles of experimenting and refining (McKenney & Reeves, 2019). EDR has proven effective for teacher professional learning (PL) in many contexts (e.g., Dunn et al., 2019; Lim, 2022), but it is relatively new to China.

China has made significant strides in its curriculum and teaching reform by implementing the New National Curriculum Standard. This updated national document provides a comprehensive framework for curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. One of the most prominent concepts in this framework is large-unit teaching, which has become a trend and marks a significant change in teaching. As a result, there is a pressing need for an effective approach to help teachers learn how to design their lessons based on the large-unit concept as per the New National Curriculum Standard.

Accordingly, this study aims to research EDR in the Chinese context and examine whether it is an effective approach to help Chinese teachers adapt their lesson design to the trend of large unit design and the requirements of the New National Curriculum Standard. The goal is to bridge the literature gap and address the reality need for teacher professional learning in the Chinese context and other contexts within the broader global background of curriculum reform. The anticipated outcome of this study is to promote a better understanding of teacher professional learning and contribute to how EDR supports it in general.

A particular focus of this study is placed on understanding the characteristics and process of teacher change that occurs as a result of EDR and how the dynamic interplay of external and internal factors affects teacher learning in EDR. This focus formulates the research questions: (1) What changes in teacher teaching practice, knowledge, perspectives, and emotions occur during the different phases of teacher participation in EDR? (2) How does the dynamic interplay of external and internal factors affect teacher learning in EDR?

The first theoretical framework is the model of teacher professional growth (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002). It proposes that teacher change occurs naturally in a professional community dealing with four domains — external domain, personal domain, domain of practice, and domain of consequence, mediated by enactment and reflection. It resonates with EDR in that it involves teachers and researchers collaborating throughout the process to study teaching and learning in a specific subject area, for the purpose of improving both teaching practices and theoretical understandings through cycles of testing and refining. During the process, a single sequence or change network should capture dynamic changes across domains.

The second theoretical framework is teacher learning mechanisms by Sims et al. (2022) in their systematic review. They reviewed the conditions for teacher learning in professional development and proposed a series of teacher learning mechanisms targeted at developing teachers’ insights, goals, techniques, and practices (I/G/T/P). This provides a plausible framework for this study to examine what combinations of causally active components EDR involves. From the first framework, we already know the external factors and their interactions with teachers and their practice, but little about the working mechanisms. Therefore, this framework is used to explore how external factors connected with EDR interplay with teachers’ internal factors, thus influencing their learning.

The research is a case study examining teachers’ EDR experiences in a nine-month professional learning initiative. The professional learning initiative will be focused on designing the class package related to the introduction of the New English Curriculum national education initiative in one secondary public school in Beijing. This initiative will be something that will be occurring regardless of the research. The research seeks to understand the teacher learning that occurs during the initiative. The research involves four phases: initial analysis, intervention introduction, intervention implementation and post-analysis. The research participants include 1 professional learning leader, 8 junior high school English teachers from grade 7, 6 senior high school English teachers from grade 10, the class students of the teacher participants, and 5 school leaders (including the principal, vice principal in charge of the school curriculum reform, the director of the teacher professional centre, and the grade leaders of each of the two grades). The study will involve surveying students and observing their classes; surveying, interviewing (both in groups and individually) and observing teachers; asking the professional learning leader to keep a reflective journal; individually interviewing school leaders; and keeping researcher field notes of the session and classroom observations. Teacher focus groups, individual interviews with school leaders and teachers, along with the professional learning leader’s journals, and teacher surveys will be transcribed. They will be analysed through thematic analysis and coded as the teacher professional growth model (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002), i.e., external domain, personal domain, domain of practice, and domain of consequence. There will also be quantitative results from student surveys through the Likert scale responses. They will be used to triangulate the findings from the interviews and journal sources mentioned above. Thematic analysis will be used to solve the first research question. Based on thematic analysis, contextual analysis will be conducted on the researcher’s field notes. The method is useful for providing interpretive accounts of teachers’ self-expressions from the researcher’s perspectives, not only to triangulate the stated points but also to add up those that have not been stated by teachers but are perceived by the researcher. We will adopt a three-step analysis method of narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2004): broadening, storying and restoring, and burrowing. The teacher learning mechanisms (Sims et al., 2022) serve as a framework for contextual analysis to validate, interpret, and supplement, thus answering the second research question.

Until now, this study has completed the initial analysis, intervention introduction, and the first of three cycles of intervention implementation. So far it is found that there are two major patterns of change network. More change sequences will complement the networks in the upcoming two cycles and more interpretative accounts of the networks should be provided through contextual analysis. It was found that many teachers noted/presented that their knowledge and perspective had changed after the introduction phase. The change in their knowledge was indicated from three aspects, including curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and knowledge of learners. The change in their perspectives was reflected in their understanding of large-unit teaching and their recognition of its value. However, senior teachers, particularly those from grade 10, who had over 8 years of experience, did not notice any significant changes from this phase. They claimed that they were already familiar with the information introduced by the workshops and that the activities only helped them to understand large-unit teaching systematically but did not offer anything new. During the first cycle, it was found that the first type of teachers tried to transfer what they had learned from the introduction phase to the first-time analysis and design. New pedagogical knowledge was input through designing together with the professional learning leader at this stage. Perspectives were changed when they saw how well the large-unit teaching could be designed rather than an abstract concept in the standard. They also changed their practice afterwards. The feedback from themselves and their students afterwards, including homework, unit projects, and assessment rubrics, convinced them that the approach was useful. However, the second type of teachers received negative feedback after they made subtle changes to their practice, then they doubted large unit teaching and showed resistance to the external factors.

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