On the Science of Education Design Studies

Abstract

The authors argue that design studies, like all scientific work, must comport with guiding scientific principles and provide adequate warrants for their knowledge claims. The issue is whether their knowledge claims can be warranted. By their very nature, design studies are complex, multivariate, multilevel, and interventionist, making warrants particularly difficult to establish. Moreover, many of these studies, intended or not, rely on narrative accounts to communicate and justify their findings. Although narratives often purport to be true, there is nothing in narrative form that guarantees veracity. The authors provide a framework that links design-study research questions as they evolve over time with corresponding research methods. In this way, an integration can be seen of research methods focused on discovery with methods focused on validation of claims.

Research–practice interactions as reported in recent design studies: still promising, still hazy

“…Finally, it is possible that relevant design research projects were omitted not on the basis of content, relevance or quality, but for the simple reason that they did not explicitly characterize their approach as design research or one of the alternate terms used to search the three databases. Educational design research literature advocates sharing empirical warrants for both design decisions Sandoval 2004) and theoretical contributions (Cobb et al 2003;Shavelson et al 2003). Though not extensively, we found examples of both design decisions and theoretical contributions in the descriptions.…”

Students’ Understanding of Statistical Inference: Implications for Teaching

“…Researchers create the conditions for developing new theories while allowing for the possibility that these theories may be refuted (cf. with Karl Popper, Section 2.3.1) by modifying classroom settings, procedures, and instructional artefacts (Shavelson et al, 2003). As a result, design experiments are prospective, in that designs are implemented with a hypothesised learning process in mind that can be exposed to scrutiny.…”

Challenge of supporting vocational learning: Empowering collaboration in a scripted 3D game – How does teachers’ real-time orchestration make a difference?

“…Fourth, the empirical study was designed for a particular learning context and for a small number of subjects. Therefore, the findings are not widely generalizable (Shavelson, Phillips, Towne & Feuer 2003). However, one strength of this study is that, along with the development of learning environments, it pays attention to the effective and flexible use of the potential offered by future 3D learning spaces with regard to the teacher's more active role as an orchestrator and fellow collaborator of the productive knowledge construction processes, which has rarely been explored to date.…”