Enabling Students to Understand Design-Based Research from their Different Perspectives
Creators: name: Brase, Alexa
name: Lübcke, Eileen
name: Reinmann, Gabi
Publisher: name: Universität Hamburg
Year: 2022
Subjects: design-based research
epistemological understanding
higher education

description: The developments of the last two years illustrate the relevance of higher education research that supports practice in unexpected and even unprecedented situations, which depend on global developments, but differ in their local expression. Evidence from large-scale studies or meta-analysis (e.g. Richmond et al., 2016; Schneider &amp; Mustafić, 2015) is important in the academic discourse and can be a basis for considerate action, but is not directly useful in many practical contexts. Design-based research (DBR) is a methodological framework that has the potential to orient educational research towards current local challenges and bridge the knowledge gap between research and practice. There are different types of DBR projects, but some shared characteristics as well: they are situated in real educational contexts, follow a cyclic and iterative logic with the multiple (re-)design and testing of an intervention, rely on co-operation between research and practice, are open for different methods and aimed at contextualized theoretical understanding (Anderson &amp; Shattuck, 2012; McKenney &amp; Reeves, 2019). Understanding and applying DBR professionally is challenging, not at least because of the differences compared to other research approaches in educational research and because of the dynamic development of the approach. Special care is therefore required in its teaching.

Our paper is about teaching DBR in higher education. In DBR projects in higher education, the roles of research and practice are often less clearly separated than in other educational contexts. Frequently, research and practice are represented by the same person, e.g. the lecturer who wants to improve his or her teaching through DBR. Lecturers can use DBR, for example, to introduce and iteratively improve subject-specific teaching methods or digital tools, to systematically study the students' interactions with these methods or tools. Therefore, DBR is an attractive part of continuing education for university teachers because it combines research-based qualifications in educational contexts AND is methodologically flexible enough to include research methods from different disciplines. This openness arouses the interest of lecturers from all academic disciplines who want to improve and innovate their subject-specific higher education teaching in a research-based qualification, e.g. in higher education Master's programmes or doctoral projects. However, the heterogeneity of the group and their subject backgrounds pose challenges for supervisors and lecturers: Unlike the average first-year student, these students do not begin their studies without methodological knowledge, epistemological assumptions and research routines, but with different and diverse ones. Actively considering and addressing these differences in introductory courses could enable students to gain a comprehensive understanding of DBR and thus promote high quality DBR studies in the future.

In addition, reflecting DBR from different angles provides an opportunity to become more aware of theoretical blind spots and practical challenges in DBR itself. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, we ask: What are the connections between the disciplinary and professional background of students and the questions they ask about DBR? What are typical reservations, points of criticism or difficulties of comprehension? What does this mean for DBR? Our findings are relevant for Master's programmes and graduate schools in Europe and beyond attended by students with different disciplinary backgrounds.

<em>Method</em>

In our qualitative study, we use data from three cohorts attending an online DBR introductory course as part of a higher education master’s program at a large university in Germany (winter term 2020/21, summer term 2021 and winter term 2021/22). After reading an introductory text out of a corpus compiled by the lecturer, the students summarized the text and asked questions on DBR via a discussion forum. The lecturer answered them individually and gave feedback on the summaries. We collected and anonymised information about the DBR introductory texts the students read, the questions, answers and possible follow-up questions and connected it with self-disclosures on students’ disciplinary and professional backgrounds, creating 50 datasets. We use qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz &amp; Rädiker, 2019) because it is well suited to track relevant differences, given the number of data sets and the depth of content. In the analysis, we categorize disciplines and questions, analyse the categories and investigate relations between them. Especially the questions are subject to a differentiated analysis regarding methodological knowledge, basic epistemological assumptions and research routines, revealing insights worthy of further investigation.

<em>Outcomes</em>

To our surprise, we found that the students often already have a multidisciplinary biography: They are professionals who have studied two epistemologically distinct courses, work and teach in strongly interdisciplinary courses, or teach their subject in classes outside their discipline (e.g. as a medical doctor teaching in social work). Therefore, the connection between the students' disciplinary backgrounds and their questions is not very clear, which could be related to the students' multidisciplinary biographies. However, the questions reveal different basic epistemological assumptions, some of which are a barrier to students' understanding of DBR: Epistemological questions focus on issues such as generalisability, the concept of hypothesis testing within iteration processes or the relationship between practical effect and scientific value of a DBR project. We also observe feedback effects on the methodological reflection of DBR itself through teaching. The permanent questioning and critical commentary on DBR by researchers from different disciplines sensitises for blind spots and the need for further discussion on epistemological foundations. As the analysis is not yet completed, further results will follow in the conference presentation. We are using the results of the study as a basis for designing teaching materials and a public blog to support students and supervisors in introducing DBR in a target group-oriented way. Our findings on teaching in multidisciplinary groups are also relevant for other Master's programmes and graduate schools. We see clearly that a) epistemological beliefs and prior methodological experience needs to be taken into account when teaching in interdisciplinary contexts, b) blanket notions of students' epistemic thinking based on their disciplines should be challenged, and c) didactic design that encourages constant reflection improves both students' understanding of the subject and teachers' understanding.

<em>References</em>

Anderson, T. &amp; Shattuck, J. (2012). Design-Based Research: A Decade of Progress in Education Research? Educational Researcher, 41(1), 16–25. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X11428813

Kuckartz, U. &amp; Rädiker, S. (2019). Analyzing Qualitative Data with MAXQDA. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15671-8

McKenney, S. E. &amp; Reeves, T. C. (2019). Conducting educational design research (2nd edition). Routledge.

Richmond, A. S., Boysen, G. A. &amp; Gurung, R. A. R. (2016). An evidence-based guide to college and university teaching: Developing the model teacher. Routledge.

Schneider, M. &amp; Mustafić, M. (Hrsg.). (2015). Gute Hochschullehre: Eine evidenzbasierte Orientierungshilfe. Springer.
description: https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/27/contribution/52545