ABSTRACT

Over the past 10 years, there has been a turn away from conventional approaches to designing innovative curricula toward what has been described as “design experiments” (Brown, 1992; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003) or “design-based research” (Barab & Squire, 2004; Fishman, Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway 2004; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). Cobb et al. (2003) described this shift in these terms:

Prototypically, design experiments entail both “engineering” particular forms of learning and systematically studying those forms of learning within the context defined by the means of supporting them. This designed context is subject to test and revision, and the successive iterations that result play a role similar to that of systematic variation in experiment. (p. 9)