Educational Design Research

Design research can defined generically as

A series of approaches with the intent of producing new theories, artifacts, and practices that account for and potentially impact learning and teaching in naturalistic setting (van den Akker, Gravemeijer, McKenney, & Nieveen, 2006, p.5)

Part 1 of the text introduces research design and Part 2 provides examples from the field from learning design, technology and curriculum perspectives. Part 3 considers quality and research design, Part 4 looks to the future.

Approaches are described as interventionist, iterative, process oriented, utility oriented and theory oriented. Educational design research (van den Akker et al., 2006) documents contributions from the educational research community that ‘seriously reflect on setting standards that improve the quality of this approach’ (van den Akker et al., 2006, p.3)

Design research as

a rigorous analysis of a learning problem [that] leads to quite specific ideas for interventions. Designers then build systems that use information technology to create specific teaching and learning materials and methods designed to realize learning gains predicted by theory and research. (Walker, 2006, p.9)

Techniques for generating ideas for design changes may be derived through a range of techniques typical to social research in both qualitative and quantitative paradigms.

Phases of design research as: preparing for the experiment; conducting the design experiment; and, retrospective analysis. Also considering the issues of ‘validity and trustworthiness’ (Gravemeijer & Cobb, 2006, p.47). Here we see similarities with other research approaches that incorporate action learning cylces within a naturalistic perspective but such similarities are not acknowledged within the text.

Gravemeijer, K., & Cobb, P. (2006). Design research from a learning design perspective. In J. van den Akker, K. Gravemeijer, S. McKenney & N. Nieveen (Eds.), Educational design research (pp. pp.18-51). London: Routledge.

van den Akker, J., Gravemeijer, K., McKenney, S., & Nieveen, N. (2006). Educational design research. London: Routledge.

Walker, D. (2006). Towards productive design studies. In J. van den Akker, K. Gravemeijer, S. McKenney & N. Nieveen (Eds.), Educational design research (pp. pp.8-13). London: Routledge.