Abstract
This research explored the implementation of a technology-enhanced instructional model for interdisciplinary learning. The model was developed in a previous phase of this research via DBR in the context of higher-education. Our aim in the current phase was to extend the applicability of the model and refine its underlying design principles based on their implementation in three secondary schools. For this purpose, a research-practice partnership was established, which included researchers, practitioners from an educational non-governmental organization, school principals, and teachers. Three practitioner-teams, facilitated by one of the researchers, collaboratively designed their own technology-enhanced interdisciplinary learning environments, in which they adapted the instructional model. This paper presents a new type of principled practical knowledge (PPK) —enhanced principled instructional model— which was obtained by comparison between the practitioners' designs and the original, higher-education context design. The PPK broadened the partnership's understanding of ways to promote interdisciplinary learning. Furthermore, it has raised new perspectives that were not considered during the development of the model, thereby allowing deeper understanding of the notion of interdisciplinary learning. Thus, this study illustrates how the establishment of productive research-practice partnerships can serve as a powerful strategy for implementing and scaling educational innovations beyond the original DBR context.
Highlights
One of the main reasons for the well-documented research-practice gap in educational research is the fact that many educational innovations are developed and explored in specific educational contexts (Goodyear & Dimitriadis, 2013)
The enhanced principled instructional model we explored in this study – Boundary Breaking for Interdisciplinary Learning (BBIL) - was developed in a Design based research (DBR) methodological approach to promote interdisciplinary understanding among higher-education students (Kidron & Kali, 2015)
This study has demonstrated the significance and effectiveness of Research-practice partnerships (RPP) for expanding the applicability of educational innovations beyond the DBR contexts in which they are developed
Summary
One of the main reasons for the well-documented research-practice gap in educational research is the fact that many educational innovations are developed and explored in specific educational contexts (Goodyear & Dimitriadis, 2013). This enables researchers to focus on the exploration of fine-grained issues of learning and instruction, on innovative uses of new and emerging technologies (McKenney, 2013), and on the development of stable designs that have recognizable identities that lead to desired learning outcomes (Bielaczyc, 2013). Adding a research phase that examines the applicability of an innovation in an additional, different context, and involving practitioners as partners, opens up the possibility to learn from the practitioners’ enactment of the instructional models and to use this knowledge to derive generalized understandings of how to support others in doing so
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