Educational Design Research: A primer

Authors


Scope
EDeR is seeking contributions on Design-Based Research within the educational sciences.All kinds of educational contexts can be addressed, such as higher education, adult education & professional training, vocational education, school education, and so forth.
We welcome contributions on Design-Based Research from pedagogical, psychological, sociological, economic, information-technological perspectives, and so forth, as long as they focus on educational problems and challenges.Furthermore, we also encourage contributions that focus on methodological and conceptual challenges and the further development of the Design-based Research approach within the educational sciences.

Objectives
The main objectives of EDeR can be summarised as… • EDeR offers researchers an opportunity to expose their Design-based Research to an international community of scholars for critical and public discussion.
• EDeR provides a publication platform for transdisciplinary Design-Based Research in education that can inform science and praxis alike.
• EDeR supports the methodological and conceptual (further) development of the Design-Based Research approach in education.EDeR provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
EDeR charges no subscription or pay-per-view fees to readers and no submission or publication fees to authors.
The publication costs of EDeR are covered by the Hamburg Center for University Teaching and Learning (HUL) at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
EDeR combines a "rolling publishing" model with creation of journal issues.This means that starting with Issue 2, we will publish articles as soon as they have successfully passed phase I and phase II of our review process (see below for details), thus building up a particular issue of EDeR in a cumulative manner.The editor-in-chief will close an issue and start a new one when a substantial amount of contributions has been published.An issue will typically hold 6-8 Academic Articles and/or Practice Illustrations, and whatever number of Discussion Articles are received in reply.

Types of Contributions
EDeR is soliciting the following three different types of contributions: Academic Articles, Practice Illustrations, and Discussion Articles.

Academic Articles
Academic Articles are original, full-length, substantive articles that might address, for example,… • theoretical and methodological aspects of Design-Based Research • the conceptualisation of Design-Based Research projects • results from different phases of Design-Based Research projects • the exposition of complete Design-Based Research projects • or any other topic that fits the overall publication scope of EDeR.
Academic Articles should remain within a 10 000 words limit.
EDeR accepts Academic Articles written in either English, or German.

Practice Illustrations
Practice Illustrations constitute an alternative form of contribution that might describe for example… • elements of Design-Based Research that address specific practice objectives • practice innovations that can inform and stimulate Design-Based Research • additional, illustrative materials linked to a particular Academic Article Practice Illustrations should remain within a 6000 words limit.
EDeR publishes Practice Illustrations either in English, or German.

Discussion Articles
Discussion Articles are another important form of contributing to EDeR.They are elicited by the journal editors as a direct reply to an original Academic Article that has already been evaluated and approved for publication within EDeR.These articles are meant to go beyond a mere critique of a given Academic Articles and ideally open up a wider discourse horizon to stimulate further discussion and exchange.
We also encourage all readers who feel inclined to respond with a Discussion Article to a particular contribution published in EDeR to get in touch with the editor-in-chief.
Discussion Articles should remain within a 6000 words limit and and correspond to the language (English or German) used in the original Academic Article they refer to.

Review process and workflow
EDeR applies a triple-peer-review approach.This contains three different phases in which distinct reviewer roles are carried out.For a better understanding of how we arrived at this review and workflow process, we recommend reading "

Phase I: peer-editor-model
In phase I of the EDeR review process and workflow model authors seek out a peer reviewer who functions as an expert text-mentor for the intended contribution.The text-mentor provides feedback for the improvement of the article and decides collaboratively with the authors when the text is ready for publication.This process is largely self-managed by the authors.However, authors inform the journal editors who is serving as the

Phase II: classic peer-review-model
In phase II, however, we follow a classic peer-review-model at EDeR.The journal editors select two reviewers among the editorial review board of EDeR who function as evaluators (reviewer II).They review the "blinded" contribution along a range of predetermined criteria (for details, see the EDeR reviewer guidelines on our website) and decide if it is rejected, requires revision, or is accepted for publication.In case of diverging review results the editor-in-chief elicits an additional review among the members of the EDeR editorial board before making a final decision.
For Practice illustrations the review process is shortened to text-mentoring (phase I) plus one blind peer-review (phase II).
Phase III: peer-discussion-model n phase III of the EDeR review process and workflow model, accepted and published contributions are opened for additional reviews by scholars who function as discussants (reviewer III) of the original texts.Authors can suggest a discussant to the journal editors.Readers of EDeR are also encouraged to suggest Discussion Articles to the journal editors.However, the journal editors reserve the right to make a final decision on accepting particular discussants.Any discussant (reviewer III) is expected to deliver a separate and coherent Discussion Article.In principle, several Discussion Articles can be elicited for a particular contribution that is published in EDeR.

About this issue
Issue 1 of EDeR offers six original Academic Articles authored by researchers from Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Switzerland.These contributions raise an interesting range of topics and issues that should resonate well with the wider community of scholars who are either already involved in design-based research efforts, or who are interested in exploring the potential of this overall approach to educational research and development for their own interests.The following paragraphs provide a condensed overview of what awaits all readers of Issue 1.

Article 01 | Design as critical engagement in and for education
The issue kicks off with a contribution authored by Christoph Richter and Heidrun Allert (Kiel University, Germany) who contrast contemporary notions of design-based research in education with methodological ideas expressed in critical and reflexive design.Their contribution illustrates how critical design efforts in education could be approached in principle and offers an outline of critical research questions for design-based research.

Article 05 | Playing with rusty nails: 'Conceptual tinkering' for 'next' practice
Simon N. Leonard, Sarah Belling, Alexandra Morris, and Eva Reynolds (University of Canberra, Australia) focus on the challenge of educational design research producing significant impact beyond the constraints of a particular project.The authors discuss this problem of implementation and introduce the concept of conceptual tinkering as an approach to engage teachers in the mindset of educational design research as a methodic approach to educational improvement.

A call for participation
As

Authoring original contributions in the form of academic articles and practice illustrations
Above all we want to encourage you to submit your original Design-Based Research work to EDeR.We would like to see a diverse range of contributions that provide food for discussion, critique, and the further development of our shared conceptual and methodological toolset.We are also explicitly interested in contributions from early-career researchers who would like to improve their Design-Based Research work through the "text-mentoring" process and the exposure of their ideas and findings to a wider discourse community.

Authoring discussion articles
A particular design feature of EDeR is the category of "Discussion Articles".We see this type of contribution as crucial to move EDeR towards our long-term goal of establishing a lively discourse community around Design-Based Research and its further development.We need you to combine critique, controversy, and a willingness to expand the discourse space around Design-Based Research into new and interesting directions.

Text-mentoring
We need you to engage as "text-mentors" (in phase 1 of our review and workflow model) who help shaping and improving early stages of EDeR contributions.While this form of peer-editing is rather common, it remains in the dark in more traditional publication formats.. EDeR explicitly gives credits to this important form of academic service and publicly attributes scholars who play this role for EDeR published articles.

Reviewing submissions
We are still expanding our Editorial Review Board.So, if you would like to serve as a peer reviewer of work that is submitted to EDeR (in phase II of our review and workflow model), then please get in touch with the Editor-in-Chief.You should hold a PhD degree and be able to point to published work of yours that falls under a Design-Based Research approach in education.

Spreading the word among your professional networks
Beyond the more formal forms of participation you can also support the project in more informal ways.Spread the word!Help us raising attention among your personal networks and the wider educational research community.

Supporting EDeR on social media
Over time we want to expand our presence on social media platforms.Right now we maintain a project page and regular updates on Researchgate.net.As long as you have a profile there you can also "follow" the project and our news stream.
On Twitter we have started to use the hashtag #EDeRJournal on individual messages that refer to EDeR related content and announcements.It would be great if you could tag your own EDeR related posts and messages accordingly, regardless on which social media platform you use.

A final note
I would like to personally thank everyone who has helped in one way or another to make this first issue of EDeR possible.I think it is a great start to an exciting project that we would like to develop together with you.
So, don't be shy, get on board,..
peer-reviewed journal, published online by the Hamburg Center for University Teaching and Learning (HUL) in collaboration with Hamburg University Press, Germany, in an open-access format.
Volume 1 | Issue 1 | 2017 | Article 07 text-mentor in phase I. Should the submitted contribution finally get published in EDeR, the text-mentor (reviewer I) is attributed by name and affiliation within the final version of the article.
s (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland) contribution focuses on the generation and development of design principles through the design-based research process and its iterative execution of cycles of intervention development, field testing, and evaluation.In this article Euler describes the characteristics that constitute design principles and how they emerge within a DBR research process.Article 03 | A phronetic approach to educational designbased research: Issues and aspirationsIn this article Emanuele Bardone (University of Tartu, Estonia) and Merja Bauters (Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland) discuss how the Aristotelian notion of phronesis could inform an in-depth discussion and reflection on the notions of intervention and theory within contemporary design-based research in education.To illustrate their line of argumentation they focus on the relation of intervention and theory to teachers' professional judgment.Article 04 | 'Where no man has gone before!' -Exploring new knowledge in design-based research projects: A treatise on phenomenology in design studiesPeter F. Sloane (University of Paderborn, Germany) raises the important and fundamental question what kind of knowledge can we actually hope to generate in the course of design-based research projects.In his contribution Peter reflects on the characteristics of design-based research on the basis of phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches.He argues that the non-analytic continental tradition of philosophy has to be re-discovered and that it holds the potential to inform researchers on how to handle the necessary switches between practical questions in design-based research and "theoretical re-assurance".
Dieter Euler take the reader into the field of management education.Their contribution titled "Responsible leadership in management education: A design-based research study" offers an account of a project that focused on the design and implementation of interventions into a particular MBA program under the notion of promoting learners' attitudes to responsible leadership.The contribution describes the research process and results that evolved through multiple cycles ofdevelopment, testing, and refinement.
. and help us to develop EDeR into an inspiring platform of publication and discourse!Sebastian H.D. Fiedler | EDeR Editor-in-Chief I have outlined above, EDeR is conceptualised as a type of publication platform that should stimulate and support the further development of a discourse community around all aspects of Design-Based Research in education.For this we need your participation, engagement, and support in various roles and functions.Only then we can turn EDeR into a collaborative story of success.