A Narrative Review of Design-Based Research in Engineering Education: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Background: Active engagement across a range of methodological frameworks is one hallmark of thriving scholarly disciplines. Design-based research is one newer approach to education research that holds promise for developing effective interventions that are iteratively theorized, designed, and tested within local engineering education contexts. Purpose: To promote engagement with diverse research frameworks, the purpose of this narrative literature review was to identify, describe, and critically examine emerging use of design-based research in engineering education. We addressed research questions focused on characterizing the use of design-based research in engineering education in terms of the a) problems studied, b) interventions designed, c) participant populations and learning contexts, d) research methods employed, e) form(s) of the research findings, and f) limitations of the literature. Furthermore, this work identified current opportunities and challenges of design-based research for the field of engineering education through analysis of review findings in light of the authors' experiences conducting design-based research in engineering education. Scope/Method: Using established review procedures that included specified database search terms and inclusion criteria, we identified 24 empirical design-based research studies in engineering education. We used qualitative content analysis to code study characteristics including nationality, participant population, research methods, and learning context. We then synthesized and critiqued findings across studies. Conclusions: In synthesizing key aspects of empirical design-based research studies in engineering education, this review provides insights into the ways design-based research is being implemented to advance engineering education imperatives and provides a foundation for expanding and strengthening use of design-based research in future work in engineering education. Opportunities of design-based research for engineering education include developing local improvements to the field's most persistent and vexing issues (i.e., "wicked" problems) and realizing the full potential of technology for 21st century engineering education. Challenges include developing interdisciplinary teams, the need for expertise across multiple research approaches and methods, funding emergent DBR projects, and disseminating DBR results across the project lifespan. Simply said, methodology matters. Broadly defined, research methodology comprises the theoretical rationales and frameworks that simultaneously link research methods-specific actions to be conducted, tools to be used, and procedures to be followed-to the ends (i.e., intended outcomes as framed by puzzles, questions, and/or hypotheses) and means (i.e., theoretical underpinnings including ontological and epistemological perspectives) of a research study (Crotty, 1998, p. 3). Clear and deliberate engagement across a range of methodological approaches is often recognized as a hallmark of thriving scholarly disciplines. Explicit exposition of methodological decisions within research studies grounds research in accepted practices for ensuring its quality and signals to the research community how to interpret its findings. Engagement with diverse methodological options within research fields grows capacity to identify, examine, realize, and deliver effective solutions to complex and nuanced issues that persist within fields themselves and/or linger at boundaries shared with other disciplines. The increasing richness and variety of paradigms, perspectives, strategies, and methods represented within the engineering education research (EER) literature of past decade (2009-2019) suggest that-despite engineering's deep post/positivist 32 Minichiello and Caldwell: Design-Based Research In Engineering Education and quantitative roots-EER is shifting toward the opportunities that diverse methodologies offer. Additionally, it signals a growing understanding within and across the field that engineering education's most vexing issues, including declining interest across all levels of education, historically and systematically embedded processes of marginalization and underrep-resentation, and a seemingly insurmountable education research-to-practice divide, require new ways to conduct and disseminate research so as to impact instructional practice and transform the engineering education system. We (the authors) contend that design-based research (DBR) is one such approach that holds promise for realizing effective solutions that-by design-traverse the research-to-practice divide; this contention provided us with the impetus for conducting a narrative literature review of DBR in engineering education. Background