DrLauren Knussen

Teachers design learning experiences for their students. This is routine work yet mostly under-recognised and largely invisible. This premise of teachers as designers underpinned Lauren’s research program as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) (2022-2025). CABAH’s multidisciplinary research agenda was to uncover a new and unique knowledge interaction between Australia’s Indigenous and scientific knowledge connections. Under the learship of CI Shirley Agostinho, and together with Associate Investigators Tiffani Apps, Peter Andersen, and Anthony McKnight, Laure  conducted a series of research projects to examine how teachers and students co-design learning experiences integrating CABAH’s new knowledge. These projects involved workshops with teachers, primary and high school students, and CABAH researchers. Two examples of the impact of our work are:

Taking care of Country - School Design Challenge

The Taking care of Country Schools Challenge invited primary school teachers and students across Australia (via social media) to take inspiration from the CABAH planetarium film, The Earth Above: A Deep Time View of Australia’s Epic History that explores Australia's past 140,000 years, entangling traditional and scientific knowledges, and respond creatively to the question: How can we bring together Country and science to take care of Country?

This translational project was underpinned by a Country-centred pedagogy developed by A/Prof Antony McKnight, a Gomeroi, Awabakal and Yuin man, and gave the opportunity for school communities to engage respectfully with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) design challenge bringing together Science, Technology and Country. The design challenge resulted in more than 2500 students from 41 schools across five states participating in 2024 and enabled Australian school children and their teachers to develop their Aboriginal knowledge understanding in the form of Country as the teacher and in relationship with science. The lasting legacy of this impactful project includes the digital design challenge Australian primary schools together with the lasting impact on participating teachers and student.

Designing for Action – ACARA Professional Learning resource for teachers

Building on a research project with secondary school teachers and students to design action-oriented learning experiences based on CABAH research, we partnered with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) to translate our research into a professional learning module for school teachers about how to design action-oriented learning experiences. The module, ‘Designing for Action’, provides teachers with a design challenge, scaffolded with guiding questions to support their design thinking and examples of learning experiences that include CABAH research. Available nationally from the ACARA Professional Learning Hub  this professional learning module aims to build teacher capacity to design learning experiences that meet the requirements of the Alice Springs Declaration (particularly Goal 2: All young Australians become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community) and the Australian Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities.