The Design Framework: An Organizing Artifact for Enhancing the Fidelity of Educational Research, Implementation, and Assessment

Design provides a unifying metaphor for describing research across fields of education. We propose a design framework as a visual and cognitive representation to unify the discourse of educational researchers, instructional designers, teachers, and policy makers by providing a common vocabulary of practice. An artifact-based design perspective illustrates how education research can be conducted to investigate intended design outcomes, to critically study the mismatch between stated and unstated intentions and outcomes, and to evaluate studies that trace learning outcomes from designed learning interventions. We then explicate three applications of the design framework to different fields of educational inquiry. Focus of the Symposium We argue that design provides a unifying metaphor for describing research across fields of education. As education continues to grow as a field of inquiry, the different research traditions used by educational researchers continue to fragment the discourse. This presents a considerable problem for researchers who attempt to communicate across discourses as well as for researchers who seek to communicate research findings to a broader public. We propose a design framework as a visual and cognitive representation to unify the discourse of educational researchers, instructional designers, teachers, and policy makers by providing a common vocabulary of practice.