I am currently taking a class in design-based research (DBR), which holds great appeal for me. In design-based research, the researcher proposes a strategy, tool, process or curriculum (the design), and then tests and refines it within a real-world context. Through repeating iterations, the researcher is able to refine the design, and then hopefully generate some principles or theories about best practice. To me, it seems that this is the way interventions and curriculum should be designed. Sometimes programs adopted in schools are "research-based" but they have never been tested with diverse groups of 34 kids with a single teacher who is learning the program on the fly. Unfortunately, that's the implementation reality for most K-12 public schools. Sometimes interventions and curriculum make that transition to the real world, and sometimes they do not. I believe that a rigorous design-based research process would probably make programs more capable of being implemented by real teachers in real schools.
I am still a little confused about the different possible outcomes of DBR. In general, the intent is to develop a set of design principles. I am not clear on exactly what a design principle is, and how well it will correlate to other situations. In many of the DBR studies I reviewed or read reviews of, it seems that the outcome was a very narrow set of guidelines that were applicable to that particular intervention or program. I can imagine a study in which broad design principles are generated, but I would think it would take several years in several contexts in order to create generalizable principles.
I created the flowchart concept map above to show my understanding of design-based research. As with any research, the first step is to determine what the topic is to be studied, and determine what prior research has been conducted. In DBR, the next phase is design, which is followed by implementation. During implementation, data is collected and analyzed, and then the design is "tweaked" to make it stronger. The design is implemented again until it is a perfect solution, or the researcher has either completed enough iterations to develop design principles or has run out of time or money! The process is complete when the researcher publishes their findings in the form of a generalizable theory or design principles. Although the wording on my concept map in the redesign phase is a little tongue in cheek, I suspect those are the actual questions a researcher asks of themselves as they progress through the process.
