Roles and Competencies of Educational Design Researchers: One Framework and Seven Guidelines

Abstract

Design research is a genre of inquiry in which the iterative development of solutions to problems in practice provides the setting for scientific inquiry. Design researchers and practitioners collaborate to analyze the problems being tackled and to develop and refine solutions, which are informed by (formative) evaluation along the way. In these studies, the function of the investigator is typically multifaceted, including the roles of consultant, designer, and researcher. While most design researchers are afforded formal opportunities to develop their research skills (e.g., through seminars and courses on research design, interview techniques, data analysis, etc.), the consultant and designer skills receive far less explicit attention and tend to be learned informally, at best. If design research is to realize its potential contribution to the field of learning and instruction, then explicit attention must be given to holistically developing design researcher capacity. This chapter first discusses design research, with attention to the goals, nature, and processes of this approach, how each role is relevant to each process, and foundational competencies that are required to enact the roles. Then, the chapter turns toward developing design researcher capacity. First, a framework for design researcher learning is introduced, followed by consideration of how that learning takes place, and culminating in guidelines for developing design researcher learning trajectories. The chapter concludes with discussion of these ideas in light of educational research capacity in general.