Integrated Mixed Methods Design-Based Research: A Critical Dialectical Pluralistic Approach

Abstract

Design-based research (DBR) is an educational research methodology in which researchers work with practitioners (e.g., teachers) and other stakeholders (e.g., parents) to develop and to implement multiple iterations of an intervention in an authentic educational context. Although DBR lends itself to mixed methods research, it has been largely ignored by the mixed methods research community. In this article, after describing what DBR is and situating it historically, we provide results from a systematic review of Scopus-indexed articles since 1960, which yielded only 68 published works wherein the author explicitly declared their study as representing some form of a mixed methods DBR study. For all but 4 of these 68 studies, the level of integration occurred at the low end of the integration continuum, being characterized by mixed methods research designs wherein integration only occurred at the interpretation stage of the DBR process. As a result, we apply critical dialectical pluralism (i.e., CDP; Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013; Onwuegbuzie, Abrams, & Forzani, in press), a research philosophy, or meta-paradigm, focused on privileging the voices of marginalized people, to DBR as one way to think about how the mixed methods research community might utilize DBR in ways that provide full(er) integration and, at the same time, promote equity. As such, we hope that the meta-framework that we have presented heretofore motivates both the mixed methods research community and the DBR community to consider using a CDP approach to mixed methods DBR studies while adopting an integrative, integrated, and integral way of thinking.