What is design-based research?

Research as a Design-Based Endeavor

Research in educational settings have historically been driven by two broad goals: understanding how people learn, particularly within school settings; and designing ways to better ensure that learning will happen in these settings. Pursuing these goals in parallel poses significant challenges. However, such work can yield significant rewards, as learning settings can be rapidly refined in response to ongoing research.

Design Experimentation: An Emergent Field

In recent years, a new paradigm has emerged for engaging in theoretical research in realistic learning settings. Design experimentation is an inter-disciplinary approach that acknowledges the fundamentally applied nature of educational research. Within this approach, researchers working in partnership with educators seek to refine theories of learning by designing, studying, and refining rich, theory-based innovations in realistic classroom environments.

Design experimentation reflects a range of practices and metholodogies that are drawn from a variety of disciplines. However, the broad array of methods, claims, theoretical stances, and intellectual traditions makes it extremely difficult to articulate exactly what design experimentation is and how it can advance as a coherent field of study.

If design experimentation is to develop into a viable, robust field, its practitioners must come to agreement about the nature and scope of design experimentation and develop shared practices and methods that allow us to build on each others' research, to share results and outcomes in ways that contribute to theory and practice, and (ultimately) to make a significant contribution to how people learn in a range of contexts.

Funded by The Spencer Foundation