ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an understudied dimension of design-based research (DBR): the collaborative relationship between researchers and classroom teachers. Given the importance of researcher and teacher collaboration in the DBR model, a lack of attention to those relationships, as well as how they may evolve, has the potential to alter DBR work. The chapter focuses on how the nature of collaboration evolved over time and played a key role in understanding the broader educational contexts of the research study and the role of DBR in actual practice. Few studies have explored teachers’ and researchers’ experiences with collaboration in DBR. Social studies educators have an obligation to prepare students to be “informed and reasoned” participants in their communities. The chapter explores autoethnographic methods to examine the evolving relationship between the researchers and the classroom teacher in the critical democratic literacy (CDL) DBR study. It suggests that CDL can be fostered in developmentally appropriate ways in early elementary settings.
