ABSTRACT
This chapter reports a study that is part of a larger project in which we investigate the use of computer-supported learning environments in science education. In the project, teachers and researchers jointly document the workings of educational practices and use this documentation in order to improve the design and enactment of the practices. These revised practices are then investigated to see how they could be further improved, and so on. With such an organization and focus, and by applying a currently popular term, the project can be characterized as design-based research (e.g. Brown, 1992; Stahl, this volume). Although there is a great variety among design-based research projects, a common aim is to provide analyses and theories that have the potential of doing “real work in practical educational contexts” (Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003, p. 13). In addition, a frequent and distinguishing feature is that the projects include separable phases – they are usually conducted “through continuous cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign” (Design-based Research Collective, 2003, p. 5). Thus, by repeatedly comparing interventions that emerge through successive iterations, design-based research projects, including ours, aim to be relevant to practical educational contexts as well as contributing to the scientific community.
