A Methodological Blueprint for Developing Interventionist Educational e-research: the Case of the Digital Change Laboratory

Abstract

This position paper suggests digital development of the Change Laboratory (CL), a third-generation, activity theoretical, educational participatory methodology. Moreover, it provides a blueprint of developing educational methodology through acknowledging and building upon methodologies foundational assumptions. Examples are given of the CL in contemporary educational research, where the methodology is seeing continued use for development of educational work practice. This is followed by a principled argument for the development of the Digital Change Laboratory. By using both synchronous and asynchronous digital technologies, the Digital Change Laboratory may give educational researchers additional pragmatic, collaborative, and participative-focused research tools that specifically enable collaborative engagements between research and practice to cross the boundaries of time and space. The unique contribution of the paper is a conceptual development of the CL methodology, which is of importance considering that publications using the methodology with digital technologies for collaboration are hard to find.Moreover, the contribution is to educational research methodology in general, where there may be an increasing need to cross the boundaries of time and space to meet future societal challenges via digital technologies.