Now, a much more interactive relationship is emerging. Design offers and opportunity to investigate complex situations that are essential to education in a relatively focused way, while simultaneously contributing real-world usable artifacts and practices. The rapid influx of information technology into all aspects of modern life, now finally including schools, is also a defining part of the new landscape that motivates and supports design experiments. Information technology is an innovation on par with written literacy in its social and representational power in learning. Indeed, information technology is manifestly transforming nearly every intellectual context, especially those having to do with science and mathematics.
Educational research has a very special role.
The world of ongoing practice is, of course, the target and crucible for testing innovation. Similarly, the for-profit sector probably cannot afford the risk of substantial innovation. Elements and options Design experiments are a new unit of research, a timely mesh of particular needs, opportunities, and capabilities that exist in the practical and scientific contexts of education today. They target working model ecologies of learning that are much better models for broader reform than isolated laboratory studies or lists of factors in effective innovation. However, in pursuing principled design, they also respond to timeless priorities.