Around the world, there are accomplished people dedicated to raising the quality of design of educational processes and materials.

ISDDE was formed to help this group work effectively as a coherent professional design and development community.

The goals of the Society are:

  • improving the design and development process
  • building a design community
  • increasing our impact on educational practice

The Fellows are designers and project leaders with outstanding records, together with some representatives from government agencies and foundations that fund such work.

2026 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award Announced

The Trustees of the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust are pleased to announce that Dr Silke Wortha has been chosen as recipient of the 2026 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award for Aspiring Educational Designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics.

Dr Silke Wortha is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Early Mathematics Learning (CEML) at Loughborough University, where her research focuses on the co-design of mathematics learning resources. Here, she led the “Maths Play and Learn Backpack” project, producing a set of co-designed resources developed to strengthen parent-child interactions around early mathematics. The resources support parents to playfully scaffold mathematical concepts at home through structured activities and guidance. The project uses a “backpack library” model, in which parents borrow topic-focused backpacks (e.g., counting) from their nursery. This model functions as a communication hub, prompting ongoing dialogue between parents and practitioners while activities are implemented at home. The resources were developed through an iterative co-design process involving practitioner consultation sessions, to ensure the materials were practical, inclusive and adaptable across home and nursery contexts.

Silke plans to use the Award to develop and pilot a Risk-Narrative Toolkit, a modular system of resources designed to scaffold understanding of numerical information for adults with dyscalculia. This will translate abstract measures of numerical risk, such as percentages and ratios, into multiple accessible representations, enabling users to engage with complex data through storytelling and visualisation. The toolkit involves a relatable narrative vignette, a simplified linguistic summary of the risk, and a visual icon array. The toolkit will scaffold engagement with numerical information, addressing functional challenges adults with dyscalculia encounter in everyday decision-making.

Congratulations to Silke on her $1000 prize!

2026 Conference in Santiago, Chile

The conference portal is now open!

Visit isdde2026.cmm.uchile.cl to learn more.

The Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile, in Santiago, Chile, is delighted to host the 2026 ISDDE Conference, from May 18th to 20th. This new ISDDE conference will be the first ever held in Latin America, offering a unique opportunity to learn about the challenges and advances in educational design across the region. We look forward to the participation of professionals and researchers from Latin America, providing an opportunity to expand the ISDDE network and foster new collaborations.

The conference will take place at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (https://ingenieria.uchile.cl/english), which houses programs in Engineering and Science. Its campus combines modern facilities with classrooms full of history. We look forward to welcoming you to Santiago-Chile in May!

2025 Eddie Award Announced!

The Trustees of the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust are pleased to announce that the 2025 Prize for Excellence in Design for STEM Education (the “Eddie”) has been awarded to Geoffrey Wake, Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham, and the Mastering Maths project team. Please learn more at https://www.isdde.org/prize/2025-geoffrey-wake/.

Hugh Burkhardt (1935-2024)

Hugh Burkhardt – where to start?

When preparing to say a few words at a celebration of his life in Nottingham. I thought of using the phrase “a force of nature” Before doing so, I looked it up. So, here’s a definition: “A person with a strong character and extraordinary energy who influences others.” I’m sure those of you who knew him will agree – that was Hugh.

There are obituaries you can read that document the key moments of his life. Hugh was a Guardian reader and had a few letters published there: it was very much fitting that his daughter, Jan, wrote an obituary that was published there. You can read a tribute from the University of Nottingham here.

But today, here at our conference, I want to say some things you won’t read elsewhere. Read more here

Geoff Wake 19th May, 2025

New Designer Award Announced!

The Trustees of the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust are pleased to announce that Sarah Porcenaluk has been chosen as recipient of the 2025 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award for Aspiring Educational Designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics.

Please learn more at 2025-bell-burkhardt-daro-shell-centre-award-for-aspiring-educational-designers

Design Award for Bob Moses

The 2023 ISDDE Prize was awarded to Bob Moses for his inspirational leadership and activism through the design of the Algebra Project and other major educational initiatives. Read more about his incredible work here.

New Design Award

The Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Awards for Aspiring Educational Designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics

The International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) is pleased to announce a new Award created to provide sums of US$1000 to encourage the work of aspiring educational designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics who have demonstrated promise. The award will contribute to the development of a new product focused on supporting learners from marginalized communities and/or their teachers. For example, this could be a resource that supports a few hours of student learning, a brief assessment, or a professional development workshop.

For full details and the online application form, please visit https://www.isdde.org/prizes-call-for-nominations/

Deadline: 31 January 2025.

2024 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award for Aspiring Educational Designer

 

 

The Trustees of the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust are pleased to announce that Pete Wright has been chosen as recipient of the 2024 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award for Aspiring Educational Designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics. Pete established the Teaching Maths for Social Justice Network (TMSJN) in 2021 and the Network has since grown to over 200 members. It facilitates sharing practice, resources and support among teachers of mathematics across all school phases.

Pete plans to use the award to support the development of a new, free professional development workshop for teacher educators through designing, trialling and evaluating a series of regional face-to-face events. The workshop will enhance the practice of teachers of mathematics and their engagement with the TMSJN classroom activities.

Congratulations to Pete on his $1000 prize!

2023 ISDDE Conference in Boston was a success!

The 2023 ISDDE conference was held October 16-19, 2023 at Boston University in Boston, MA. The conference site contains information about this event.

ISDDE 2023 Design Award

The Trustees of the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust are pleased to announce that Patrick Iroanya has been chosen as recipient of the 2023 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award for Aspiring Educational Designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics. Patrick’s promise as a designer, shown, in particular, by his provision of free online maths tutoring to secondary-age learners in marginalized communities across South Africa, impressed the Awards Committee greatly. Congratulations to Patrick on his $1000 prize.

Call for Nominations for the ISDDE Prize

The ISDDE Prize for Excellence in Design for STEM Education of $5,000 is offered for a substantial body of work, by an individual or a team, over a period of years that shows excellence in design for education in science or mathematics. In awarding The Prize the judges will seek excellence in the art and science of design in education.

Please nominate a STEM Designer! See more at https://www.isdde.org/prizes-call-for-nominations/

New Issue of Educational Designer Published

We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest issue of ISDDE’s journal,  Educational Designer.  Issue #15 is very varied, with four articles. Marc North and Sarah Heesom have written about design of their large-scale project to promote teaching improvement in underperforming schools. Nina Sangers with Evers-Vermeul, Sanders and Hoeken studied the policies for writing in Dutch biology, geography, and history textbooks. Deborah Fields and six colleagues report on SPIKEY-20, a virtual epidemic released into a virtual world, which infected thousands of players. Good design can promote educative outcomes for public health. Amanda Strawhacker, Emily Relkin and Marina Bers investigate design of an assessment of pre-schoolers in coding a robot. The editorial team hopes this issue of journal will help us to spread ideas and good practice of educational design.

We welcome submissions of articles for Issue #16 and also the Special Issue on Justice and Belonging.  See Guidelines for authors on the journal website. https://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/index.htm

ISDDE 2022 Conference a Success!

ISDDE 2022 was held at the University of Nottingham Conference Centre on Sept 26, 2022 (evening) through Sept 29, 2022. The conference theme was Learning 2 Design: Design 4 Learning.

Find out more at https://sites.google.com/view/isdde2022/home.

ISDDE 2022 Award Announced

The Trustees of the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust are pleased to announce that Sofia Tancredi has been chosen as recipient of the 2022 Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Award for Aspiring Educational Designers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics. Sofia’s promise as a designer, shown, in particular, by her designs integrating sensory-seeking actions as a fundamental part of regular classroom mathematics learning, impressed the Awards Committee greatly, and they see considerable potential in her approach for supporting marginalized students. Congratulations to Sofia on her $1000 prize. For details of her work, please see https://edrl.berkeley.edu/projects/balance-board-math/

Issue #14 of Educational Designer released!

Issue #14 of the electronic, open-access ISDDE journal “Educational Designer” has just been published. It can be accessed directly at the home page Educational Designer.

The articles in this issue each focus on a design challenge. Harouna Ba and Dor Abrahamson discuss the designers’ dilemma of how much freedom to allow students to initiate and define their own tasks by comparing two movement-based STEM learning activities. Martin Johnson, Rachael Horsman and Darren Macy outline the design process they used to create a framework of mathematics content which can be used by educators in emergency contexts where learners are forcibly displaced by conflict or disaster. Yu-Ping Chang, Fou-Lai Lin and Kai-Lin Yang are leaders of Taiwan’s Just Do Math project, a wide-reaching teacher professional development initiative using a multi-layered and multi-stage cascade model. They describe designing the professional development for those leaders who will help very large numbers of teachers embed the new principles into regular classrooms.

“Educational Designer” welcomes contributions related to the design of educational programs, products. systems and services. Details of the range of contributions that are welcome appear on the journal home page.

Kaye Stacey

Editor-in-Chief

Educational Designer
E-journal of the International Society for Design and Development in Education

2020 ISDDE Prize

The International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) has awarded the prestigious Prize for Excellence in Educational Design to the value of $5,000 to Joseph Krajcik , Lappan-Phillips Professor of Science Education at Michigan State University, USA.  Professor Krajcik is an expert designer of instructional materials. He leads the CREATE for STEM Institute, a joint institute between the College of Natural Science and the College of Education at Michigan State and has been a pioneering leader in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education for decades with his impact acknowledged globally

The 2020 Prize was presented to Professor Krajcik at ISDDE’s virtual conference in March 2021. Details about this unique event can be found here,

ISDDE gratefully acknowledges the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust which funds the award.

Virtual Conference – March 24, 2021

ISDDE (the International Society for Design and Development in Education) held their first online international day conference on Wednesday March 24th, 2021. It was a great success! It:
  • was hosted in three phases across 24 hours with contributions from Far East, Europe/Africa and Americas time zones;
  • included the presentation of the prestigious ISDDE Prize for excellence in design for education in mathematics, science or technology for 2020;
  • included plenaries, interviews, panels and discussions;
  • and focused on design in mathematics and science of curricula, resources, assessment, professional learning, teaching and learning with technology.

Publication of Educational Designer #13

The latest issue of Educational Designer, the journal of ISDDE, is now available at https://www.educationaldesigner.org/ed/volume4/issue13/.

In this issue, the authors describe, explain, demonstrate and reflect on practical design strategies that they have used in curriculum development, from primary school to adult learners. Koeno Gravemeijer discusses educational modelling through five case studies of the creation of instructional materials. The next article is especially relevant while Education is being so heavily impacted by COVID19, Erin Gibson and colleagues  exemplify and evaluate the design strategies used to transform in-person education materials for health professional for remote use.

Kevin Reins describes his experiences over a decade using modified lesson study with pre-service teacher education students. Finally, Hugh Burkhardt and Daniel Pead provide a sweeping taxonomy of 30 design strategies and tactics that have proved effective for curriculum material development at the Shell Centre of Mathematical Education. Strategies are described and linked to illustrative examples.

We thank the authors, the editorial team and anonymous reviewers for their hard work. After five years, Dr Sheila Evans, is stepping down from being our Assistant Editor. We especially thank Sheila for all her work and we wish her well for the future. Expressions of interest for the Assistant Editor are now being called for. Please contact Kaye Stacey at   if you may be interested.

Kaye Stacey
Editor in Chief