ABSTRACT
The readers of the Journal of the Learning Sciences will also regularly turn to the special issue of this journal from 2004 as well as special issues of Educational Researcher and Educational Psychologist for guidance regarding the various argumentative grammars that design research follows. The authors explore the implications of conceiving of contemporary design research as a science of the doubly artificial. The sheer breadth of mediated action in contexts is one way that cultural-historical interventions may be distinguished from much of learning sciences research, which has mainly focused on investigating disciplinary learning in schools. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) approaches, taken as a whole, emphasize the cultural and institutional organization of human action in various forms, in a wide variety of social settings ranging from classrooms in schools to community settings and workplaces. A related contribution of CHAT approaches to intervention research has been their attention to human diversity as a resource for design.
