Infrastructuring as a Practice of Design-Based Research for Supporting and Studying Equitable Implementation and Sustainability of Innovations

Abstract

This essay presents infrastructuring as a useful construct for guiding efforts to support more equitable implementation and sustainability of resources developed to support student learning in design-based research. Infrastructuring refers to activities that aim to redesign components, relations, and routines of schools and districts that influence what takes place in classrooms. It can take place within ongoing, long-term research–practice partnerships, where teams can follow the contours of problems that arise from introducing innovations into classrooms, particularly as they relate to equity of implementation of those innovations. When we support and study infrastructuring in partnership with educators, we can create improvements to educational systems that last.

Acknowledgments

Infrastructuring cannot take place without great teams. In the infrastructuring efforts described here, I was supported especially by Katie Van Horne, Allysa Orwig, Douglas Watkins, Susan Olezene, Michael Novak, Tara McGill, and Tamara Sumner.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation (DRL-1626365, DRL-1748757), and Denver Public Schools. This material is based in part on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-1147590, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Denver Public Schools. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.