Studying the process of educational design – revisiting Schön and making a case for reflective design-based research on teachers’ ‘conversations with situations’

Abstract

This conceptual paper discusses Donald A. Schön’s views on design and how it could inform design-based research (DBR) on teachers’ use of technology in education. It argues that the rich affordances of digital technologies and teachers’ and students’ situated designs with such technologies in complex and changing educational contexts make viewing design as rational problem-solving problematic. Instead, it is suggested that adopting Schön’s view of design as a reflective conversation with the situation in DBR approaches has the potential of informing both research on the use of digital educational technologies and teachers’ situated use of such technologies. The paper then presents suggestions as to how Schön’s ideas for research on teachers’ situated practices could contribute to theory development in DBR. Finally, some of the possibilities and challenges of the reflective DBR approach suggested in this paper are discussed.