Design-Based Research A Decade of Progress in Education Research?

For a more in-depth overview, the interested reader is invited to read the articles in the three special issues of education journals published in 2003 and 2004: Journal of the Learning Sciences, vol. 13, no. 1; Educational Researcher, vol. 32, no. 1; and Educational Psychologist, vol. 39, no. 4. p. 2

Ann Brown (1992), the American researcher credited with first developing DBR, noted that “an effective intervention should be able to migrate from our experimental classroom to average class- rooms operated by and for average students and teachers, sup- ported by realistic technological and personal support” (p. 143). p. 2

Mingfong, Yam San, and Ek Ming (2010) identified four design characteristics that they sug- gest must be aligned to create effective interventions. These are “frameworks for learning, the affordances of the chosen instruc- tional tools, domain knowledge presentation, and contextual limitations” (p. 470). p. 2

We should note that the terms “design-research” (Oha & Reeves, 2010) and “develop- ment research” (Conceicao, Sherry, & Gibson, 2004; Oha & Reeves, 2010) also have been used to describe this methodology, but we use the more popular term design-based research in this p. 2

As an example, this differentiation between grand theories and “theories that work” was picked up by Tiberghien, Vince, and Gaidioz (2009) as they derived a theoreti- cal model for DBR but restricted its dominion to very practical constraints and the specific context of physics instruction. p. 3

Involving a Collaborative Partnership Between Researchers and Practitioners p. 3

Designs evolve from and lead to the development of practical design principles, patterns, and/or grounded theorizing. The focus on theoretical understanding is implied in the fourth and final phase of a DBR study, which Reeves (2000) referred to as “reflection to produce design principles and enhance solution implementation” (p. 9). p. 3

Herrington, McKenney, Reeves, and Oliver (2007) addressed this concern head-on in an article demonstrating ways in which DBR can be used as a basis for a doctoral dissertation over a four-year period. p. 4

A number of ways have been suggested to minimize this con- cern in DBR as well as in other qualitative methods (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2007 p. 4

Data from the 47 articles selected (5 articles each year from 2003 to 2011 and 2 articles from 2002) were entered into a spread- sheet; the graphs and analyses presented in the following sections are derived from this compilation. The spreadsheet is available for further analysis (and reader comments; for further details, see sup- plemental document available on the journal website). p. 5

REFEREnCEs p. 10