ABSTRACT
My thinking about design research begins with the question: Why now? Why have some researchers and policymakers become interested in design research at just this moment in history? I think that there are two major reasons. The most important is disappointment with the impact of conventional approaches to research in education. We have seen no intellectual breakthroughs in research in education comparable to advances in medicine, engineering, and the sciences; nor have we seen any measurable improvement in teaching practices or student learning on a large scale. In clinical experiments, practices and programs supposedly backed by research have generally proved to be only slightly better than conventional practice. In short, more than half a century of research into education since World War II has not noticeably improved education. In many countries the quality of education seems to have declined over the past several decades, just when educational research had supposedly begun to accumulate enough knowledge for its findings to make an impact. Many of us who advocate design research believe that it has the potential, in conjunction with standard forms of inquiry, to produce the kind of impact research has made in other areas of life, an argument I will develop later.
