Education as design for learning: A model for integrating education inquiry across research traditions

Abstract

How can we build on the diversity of approaches and methods used in educational researches to develop a shared research enterprise? We propose that all approaches to education research can be described in terms of the concept of education as design for learning. Design typically involves a plan to create something as well as the action taken to bring something new into the world. Education happens when people design learning opportunities for others. If education is the design for learning, then education research can be seen as the study of the design for learning. Instead of treating the efforts of education researchers as wildly divergent and incompatible quests, a design for learning perspective corrals the diverse methods of inquiry in education into the study of how people build, test, assess, and critique processes intended to guide learning. We suggest that the seemingly mutually exclusive approaches to education inquiry often presented in the literature might in fact serve as countervailing movements in an iterative design discourse of education research.