Disruption through Design (Professional Learning That Empowers and Ignites Change)

This teacher-friendly resource guides educators in planning for collaborative inquiry with the goal of disrupting inequitable structures and traditions within classrooms and schools. Disruption through Design provides approaches to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment that value students’ literacies, languages, and lives.

Each chapter focuses on different inquiry groups: how they worked, what teachers learned, and how the collaborative inquiry and design process helped teachers push against deficit-oriented practices in their classrooms and school communities. Building on the work of these groups, this book offers practical tools for engaging in collaborative inquiry and design that leads to deep reflection, needed rejuvenation, and revolution within classroom practice.

Warrington and Fowler-Amato offer a model of professional learning that respects teachers as authorities on classroom practice. This kind of professional learning—described in NCTE’s position statement Shifting from Professional Development to Professional Learning: Centering Teacher Empowerment—supports growth and sustains the curiosity and passion of educators.

Principles in Practice series