Instructional Design

"Education has missed the boat, with respect to instructional design. Teachers come up with lesson plans on the fly, with little thought to why they are presenting information or even who their audience is. Teacher training, at the university level and during Professional development, needs to focus on helping teachers become comfortable with instructional design principles."

I don't know if I really agree with this statement. I know lots of teachers that work hard on their lessons to create something that fits their students’ needs and best learning practices.

Our administration has given us opportunities to create curriculum that flows and leads from one grade to the next.

Teachers then use the objectives in their lessons. Many post the current teaching objectives in the classroom while teaching. This not only reminds the teacher to share the objectives with the students before every lesson but it allows visitors in the classroom to see what the educator is teaching that day.

MTSS or RTI seems to also be a big part of the education structure today.  Teachers are able to create lessons that are specific to a certain groups needs. 

The new CORE standards will also allow teachers across the country to focus on specific objectives that all teachers in those specific grades will be using in their lessons.

With these things in mind, I can't imagine any teacher just coming up with lessons "on the fly."
I do agree that professional development opportunities should continue to help teachers improve but the most important thing teachers need is time. Time to collect data, time to collaborate about the data and then time to come up with ideas educators can use to help improve their data.

If teachers have these opportunities then I think we could see more teachers creating lessons that are appropriate for their audience and presenting lessons that attract their audience’s attention.