Capturing Lessons for Practice

Abstract

Classroom practitioners are often asked to adopt continually changing standards, to be collaborators and reflective practitioners, and to make new and evolving technologies an integral part of their practice. Understanding Problems of Practice: A Case Study in Design Research describes a process for thinking about and reflecting on innovative practice – the design research process. Each of the five phases of the design research process is exemplified by a discussion of how the authors used this process to create a technology education course for perspective secondary educators. In this chapter, the authors discuss the fifth phase of the design research process. In the design research literature, this phase is generally concerned with gathering evidence to promote the broader adoption, enactment, and sustainability of an innovation and often involves professional development, diffusion, technical support, and problem-solving. The authors acknowledge that the activities associated with this phase are only rarely within the purview of the classroom practitioner. Thus, for the classroom practitioner, the fifth phase of the design research process should focus on capturing lessons learned about both practice and the use of the design research process. Reframing this phase as capturing lessons learned better suits the classroom practitioner as it supports the goal of design research to contribute to improvements in practice as well as expand practitioner knowledge. To exemplify this phase, the authors present the lessons they learned about their practice and the reframed design research process they used as classroom practitioners.