Reinventing learning: a design-research odyssey

Abstract

Design research is a broad, practice-based approach to investigating problems of education. This approach can catalyze the development of learning theory by fostering opportunities for transformational change in scholars' interpretation of instructional interactions. Surveying a succession of design-research projects, I explain how challenges in understanding students' behaviors promoted my own recapitulation of a historical evolution in educators' conceptualizations of learning -Romantic, Progressivist, and Synthetic (Schön 1981) -and beyond to a proposed Systemic view. In reflection, I consider methodological adaptations to design-research practice that may enhance its contributions in accord with its objectives. (1980), who was a student of Piaget, champions the pedagogical implications of constructivism: children best learn via engaging in goal-oriented interactions with materials and reflecting on solutions to emergent problems they encounter in so doing. Abrahamson, D. (in pressAnd yet adding a pragmatic twist to constructivism, Papert (1991) coined the term "constructionism" so as to suggest that children best construct knowledge when they construct artifacts in the public domain. I believe that adults, too, best construct knowledge when they construct artifacts in the public domain, and this includes educational researchers constructing experimental learning materials. I thus view design research as a constructionist approach to educational research: researchers best construct theory when they construct artifacts for students and reflect on solutions to emergent problems encountered in so doing. These problems emerge for researchers in making sense of how students engage the artifacts. This reflective article discusses the role of design research in promoting learning theory. The context selected for the reflection is an enduring educational-research problem-the roles that naïve, spontaneous forms of knowing and acting may play in fostering conceptual learning. The article discusses a multi-project dialectical evolution of theoretical models pertaining to this problem. I argue that a succession of designresearch studies has brought about iterative transformational change in one researcher's conceptualization of naïve knowing and its didactical affordances. I implicate this transformational change in the micro-analysis of children's behaviors as they engage in cognitive and dialogical problems centered on activities with artifacts designed for these studies. I imply that my subjective experience generalizes broadly to educational scholarship.In order to lend structure to this reflection, I will begin by drawing on the literature to trace a historical trajectory in educational scholarship pertaining to the role of 3 Dor Abrahamson (in press), Reinventing Learning: a Design--Research Odyssey, ZDM 2015[6] dor@berkeley.edu naïve knowledge in conceptual learning. I then recount my ontogenetic journey as mapped upon this phylogenetic journey yet extending beyond it. This "cartographical" exercise should i...

The Future of Embodied Design for Mathematics Teaching and Learning

“…For example, students who judge correctly, if qualitatively, that some diagonal line is "steeper" than another line should come to accept the rise-over-run geometrical comparison analysis of these same two lines, which yields a compatible quantitative inference. Through participating in embodied-design activities, teachers and students therefore experience opportunities to surface their tacit sensorimotor orientation to situations in juxtaposition with proposed cultural forms, such as mathematical models, that reframe these situations (Abrahamson, 2004(Abrahamson, , 2007a(Abrahamson, ,b, 2013(Abrahamson, , 2015a(Abrahamson, ,b, 2019Abrahamson and Wilensky, 2007). Importantly, embodied designs set students up for correct intuitive responses or performances before presenting them with analytic procedures that validate yet enhance these intuitions.…”

Design research with a focus on learning processes: an overview on achievements and challenges

“…Once the researchers have committed themselves to certain grand theories and background theories, those theories are basically treated as givens in a design research project. The article of Abrahamson (2015) shows, however, that a series of design research projects can lead researchers to switch to another background theory.…”

“…In the special issue, authors demonstrate ways of designing and redesigning technologies such as the LYPPSync, a diagnostic system delivered on smart phones (Confrey and Maloney 2015) or Seeing Chance, Kinemathics, and Giant Steps (Abrahamson 2015). In one submission (Gresalfi 2015) the author works to bring together the use of a game, Quest Atlantis, and their compelling forms of engagement together with what is known from research about the relative merits of different conceptions of central tendency.…”

A computational lens on design research

“…Observing students assemble and construct their ideas using (digital) tools thus provides an opportunity for researchers to construct local theories, opening a window on their thinkingin-change (see Noss & Hoyles, 1996 for an elaboration of the 'windows' metaphor). This idea is developed by the contribution of Abrahamson (2015), who argues that DR is in fact usefully conceived as a constructionist approach to educational research: "I believe that adults, too, best construct knowledge when they construct artifacts in the public domain, and this includes educational researchers constructing experimental learning materials. I thus view design research as a constructionist approach to educational research: researchers best construct theory when they construct artifacts for students and reflect on solutions to emergent problems encountered in so doing."…”

“…I thus view design research as a constructionist approach to educational research: researchers best construct theory when they construct artifacts for students and reflect on solutions to emergent problems encountered in so doing." (Abrahamson, 2015).…”