Dimensión Socio‐Económica

It is not self-evident how in design research the design of interventions contribute to design principles or theory building. With reference to Wademan’s generic model (1995; see also Figure 4), Reeves’s exemplary schemes (2006) in Figure 2 and McKenney’s display (2001) in Figure 3, we know that the researcher (or the collective of researchers and practitioners) designs and develops (in an iterative way) the intervention with the aim that, after a number of cycles, the intended outcomes are realized, or a well-grounded ‘local’ theory is developed. Each iteration or cycle is a micro-cycle of research, i.e. a step in the process of doing research and will include systematic reflection on the theoretical aspects or design principles in relationship to the status of the intervention, ultimately resulting in design principles or theoretical statements.

In other words and with reference to the overall research question presented above, the researcher (or research group) will conclude the following about his intervention:

Given my context Z, if I do <intervention (theory based) X > then I expect <intended outcomes Y>. This can be displayed schematically as:

Intervention X

Input Process Y₁, YOutcomes₂, ...., Y_n

Context Z:

It is important to point out a few key aspects in this scheme. At first, the outcomes of the intervention are indicated as Y1, Y2, …,Yn, because often an intervention is designed to realize

multiple outcomes, for example better achievement, improved student attitude, increased teacher satisfaction.

Another key aspect is that the intervention is presented as ‘input → process’. It is crucial that design researchers (or the research group) realize that when designing an innovative process (for example, learning environment) one has to take into account also the inputs or

conditions necessary to make the process function (for example, availability of infrastructure, a change in organization of the teaching-learning processes, teacher development). Van den Akker (chapter 2) argues and illustrates that in curriculum design research all the inter-related components of a curriculum need to be taken into account when developing an innovative curriculum. In addition, he shows the importance of a careful implementation of the intended curriculum to ascertain that there will be a good match of the intended curriculum with the implemented curriculum (‘what and how it is taught’) and the attained curriculum (‘learning experiences and outcomes’).

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The teacher development part (or more general, attention for the user) can be particularly a crucial factor in a successful implementation of an innovative intervention. With

reference to the display above, it is suggested that in the early stages of design research the focus is on designing the process with the active involvement of practitioners (i.e.

representatives of the future users) involved in or familiar with the vision and ideas underlying the intervention.

And only after it has been proven that it is possible to design an intervention resulting in the desired outcomes, the focus of the research may shift to inputs or conditions necessary for the interventions to function in the intended context. In other words, first a ‘proof of existence’ should be given, before the focus of the design research shifts to dissemination and implementation, i.e. to preparing and training the intended users of the innovative intervention and assuring that other conditions be fullfilled.

So in the end, the research group has at its disposal not only the intervention resulting in the desired outcomes, but also (based on a systematic reflection and analysis of the data collected during this cyclical process) an understanding of the ‘how and why’ of the functioning of the intervention in the particular context within which it was developed. The design researcher will summarize this understanding of the ‘how and why’ of the intervention in one or more ‘design principles’, using the terminology developed by van den Akker (1999), Nieveen et al. (2006) and Reeves (2000, 2006). As other authors, e.g. Barak and Squire (2004 ) and Edelson (2006), use ‘theory’ as the yield of design research, one may also speak of ‘intervention theory’ or ‘design theory’ (Wademan, 2005; Figure 4) or – in the case of validation studies – of local instruction theory (see e.g. Gravemeijer & Cobb in chapter 3 in this book).

Schematically this can be represented as: Context Z:

Intervention X

Input Process Y₁, YOutcomes₂, ...., Y_n

design principles or intervention theory or design theory or local instruction theory

In design research, interventions are developed in a cyclical process of successive prototypes developed in a number of iterations (see Figure 1).

In the previous section, a set of criteria for good quality interventions has been presented. We argued that these criteria may need different emphases in different phases of the research (see Table 3, above).

A key idea is that when the prototype of the intervention in a certain iteration does not result in the desired outcomes for that iteration, the conclusion is that the intervention is not yet good enough – in other words, the asserted design principles (or intervention theory) for that iteration are not (yet) good enough or not yet emerging. This has to result in a re-design or refinement of the intervention, which goes hand-in-hand with the refinement of the intervention theory or design theory (as is illustrated in Figure 4, the Generic Design Research Model, Wademan, 1995).

After a number of iterations with shifting criteria (see Table 3 above), the researcher (or research group) may conclude that based on the analysis of the evaluation data, the ‘realized outcomes’ are close enough to the ‘intended outcomes’ after which he/she may conclude that the design principles appear to be effective. Or, in other words, the researcher (or research group) has developed design principles or a ‘local’ (intervention) theory for the context in which he/she works:

in context Z the intervention X (with certain characteristics) leads to outcomes Y1, Y2, …, Yn.

Two examples are given to illustrate this – rather abstract – phrasing of the yield of design research. The Design-Based Learning Research Collective (2003, p. 5) states that “the design of innovations enables us to create learning conditions that learning theory suggests are productive, but that are not commonly practiced or are not well understood”.

In other words included in the intervention is knowledge about how to create conditions for learning (the outcomes aimed for).

The second example is taken from science education. Lijnse (1995, p. 192) argues that design research (he calls it developmental research) is “a cyclic process of theoretical reflections, conceptual analysis, small-scale curriculum development, and classroom research of the interaction of teaching-learning processes. The final, empirically based description and justification of these interrelated processes and activities constitutes what we call a possible “didactical structure” for the topic under consideration.”

In other words, the local theory consists of a didactical structure for the teaching-learning processes for a certain topic.

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