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The authors argue that design-based research, which blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments, is an important methodology for understanding how, when, and why educational innovations work in practice. Design-- based researchers' innovations embody specific theoretical claims about teaching and learning, and help us understand the relationships among educational theory, designed artifact, and practice. Design is central in efforts to foster learning, create usable knowledge, and advance theories of learning and teaching in complex settings. Design-- based research also may contribute to the growth of human capacity for subsequent educational reform.
Educational researchers, policymakers, and practitioners agree that educational research is often divorced from the problems and issues of everyday practice-a split that creares a need for new research approaches that speak directly to problems of practice (National Research Council [NRC], 2002) and that lead to the development of "usable knowledge" (Lagemann, 2002). Design-based research (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992) is an emerging paradigm for the study of learning in context through the systematic design and study of instructional strategies and tools. We argue that design-based research can help create and extend knowledge about developing, enacting, and sustaining innovative learning environments.
Definitions of design experiments abound (see Bell, 2002a). We use the phrase design-based research methods deliberately (after Hoadley, 2002) to avoid invoking mistaken identification with experimental design, with studies of designers, or with trial teaching methods. We propose that good design-based research exhibits the following five characteristics: First, the central goals of designing learning environments and developing theories or "prototheories" of learning are intertwined. Second, development and research take place through continuous cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign (Cobb, 2001; Collins, 1992). Third, research on designs must lead to sharable theories that help communicate relevant implications to practitioners and other educational designers (cf. Brophy, 2002). Fourth, research must account for how designs function in authentic settings. It must not only document success or failure but also focus on interactions that refine our understanding of the learning issues involved. Fifth, the development of such accounts relies on methods that can document and connect processes of enactment to outcomes of interest.
Why We Need Design-Based Research: Challenges of Context, Design, and Enactment
The last few years have seen a renewed...