Patterns of practice and design: Towards an agile methodology for educational design research

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework which attempts to address the barriers to the development of successful educational design research through a process which identifies gaps in current practices and devises innovations to target them. Educational design research assumes an ambitious position: a dual commitment to understand and contribute to both theory and practice. This task is confounded by the complexity of the domain and the inherent multi-stakeholder nature of most initiatives. Three barriers to success are identified: the shortage of mechanisms for cross-stakeholder dialogue, the failure to account for existing practices and contexts, and the rigid processes dictated by the dynamics of research projects. We report early findings from an attempt to address these barriers, based on an extension and adaptation of the Participatory Pattern Workshop (PPW) methodology (This paper has received the support of the Learning Layers project co-funded by the European Commission; Grant Agreement Number 318209; http://learning-layers.eu/).