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Methodological Choice and Design pp 37–50Cite as

Design-Based Research

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Part of the book series: Methodos Series ((METH,volume 9))

Abstract

Design-based research, with the design experiment as its main practical method, can be characterised as an inter-disciplinary ‘mixed-method’ research approach conducted ‘in the field’ that serves applied as well as theory-building purposes. Substantial progress has been made over recent years in articulating the methodological and epistemological basis for design-based research and in developing it into a teachable method. This chapter delineates these lines of development and provides a short overview of how a prototypical design study is conducted. It identifies and problematises the notions of design and design methods arguing that they need further conceptual development and integration with the methodological foundation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Schools and classrooms are the most typical locations where design studies are conducted. However, there is no principled reason why DBR should not be applied in other learning settings.

  2. 2.

    Differently from grounded theory, though, DBR has no particular interest in fencing off prior theories and encourages theory-building that incorporates elements beyond the observations.

  3. 3.

    To avoid confusion with more conventional notions of ‘theory’, one may speak of ‘models’ here rather than theories. The notion of ‘a learning design model’ captures well the distinction between a model and more or less customised instances of that model, as developed in the more technical research on learning design (e.g. Koper , 2005). However, the terminology used by Cobb and Gravemeijer (2008) that is also representative for other researchers in the learning sciences is used predominately in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Social Work, Research Centre for Computer-supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo), The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Peter Reimann

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  1. Peter Reimann
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Correspondence to Peter Reimann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fac. Education & Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006, New South Wales, Australia

    Lina Markauskaite

  2. Fac. Education & Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006, New South Wales, Australia

    Peter Freebody

  3. Fac. Education & Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006, New South Wales, Australia

    Jude Irwin

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Reimann, P. (2011). Design-Based Research. In: Markauskaite, L., Freebody, P., Irwin, J. (eds) Methodological Choice and Design. Methodos Series, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8933-5_3

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