Design work is, by its very nature, contextual. The purpose of any design work is to create something useful for a particular group of people, in a particular context, doing a particular activity. Teachers’ design is shaped by the approach to design in their school reflecting the ways that teachers within the school interact with each other and the nature of the school community. The specifics of the school environment influence how the work of designing is distributed amongst individuals or teams, the ways in which collaboration and cooperation occur, the design decisions a teacher can make themself or needs to seek approval for, and the supports available for the design process. This chapter presents findings from a large research study of Australian primary school teachers to describe teachers’ design thinking and work, and how it is shaped by the contexts of their schools. We do this by drawing out the similarities we found that the teachers in our study described to us, and by highlighting some of the differences for individual teachers and between different schools. Using Activity Theory, we identified three key contextual dimensions: rules (both external curriculum requirements and school-specific policies), community (collaborative networks and student population diversity), and division of labour (how design work is shared and implemented). Our findings reveal that teachers balance individual and collective design responsibilities while uniquely serving as both designers and implementers of their teaching programs. This enables continuous refinement based on direct classroom observation, though teachers’ ability to leverage this advantage varies with school-specific factors. The research demonstrates that effective teacher design work requires both individual skill and supportive institutional structures that facilitate collaboration and responsive adaptation to student needs. These findings have important implications for how schools organise and support teachers’ design practices, particularly in creating systems for collaborative planning and resource sharing.