Patterns of Practice and Design:

Towards an Agile Methodology for

Educational Design Research

academia.edu/13129378learning-layers.eu

Yishay Mor, John Cook, Patricia Santos, Tamsin Treasure-Jones,

Raymond Elferink, Debbie Holley, James Griffin

Learning scientists Computer scientists

We need to

understand

Let’s build

some cool

stuff

DevelopersField researchers

Let’s build

stuff that

works

It’s tough

out here

Confer - Three steps to consensus

Kernel theories general explanatory theories from the natural or social

sciences.

Practice an established mode, or pattern, of behaviour.

Epistemic Practice an established mode, or pattern, of behaviour by

which people construct knowledge.

Practice narrative a method for documenting a Practice, as a story of a

person in defined circumstances performing defined actions to achieve

desired effects.

Practice pattern a generalisation of several practice narratives, a claim

that in circumstances with certain characteristics, persons of certain

characteristics will perform certain actions to achieve certain

objectives.

Domain-specific theories of practice A projection of a kernel theory, or

a combination of several kernel theories, into a domain of practice, to

explain and / or predict patterns of behavior in that domain.

(Agile) User Stories "In software development and product

management, a user story is one or more sentences in the everyday or

business language of the end user or user of a system that captures

what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job function. User

stories are used with agile software development methodologies as the

basis for defining the functions a business system must provide, and to

facilitate requirements management. It captures the 'who', 'what' and

'why' of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail

by what can be hand-written on a small paper notecard."

Design Narratives "Design narratives are accounts of critical events in a

design experiment from a personal, phenomenographic perspective.

They focus on design in the sense of problem solving, describing a

problem in the chosen domain, the actions taken to resolve it and their

unfolding effects" (Learning design grid)

Design Patterns "A design pattern describe a recurring problem, or

design challenge, the characteristics of the context in which it occurs,

and a possible method of solution." (learning design grid)

Design Principles Whereas Design Patterns are derived from practice

and then explained by theory, Design Principles are derived from theory

and then validated by evidence from practice.

Design Scenarios a testable design proposition, formulated as a

speculative narrative. "Design scenarios borrow the form of design

narratives, adapting it from an account of documented past events to a

description of imagined future ones. Design scenarios retain the same

basic components that constitute design narratives: context, challenge,

theoretical framework, events and actions, results and reflections.

However, these elements reflect a hypothesis about possible future

states of the world." (learning design grid).

Storyboard a graphical description of a scenario, presented from the

user's perspective

Local Instructional Theory diSessa & Cobb[3] define local, or domain

specific instructional theories as "conceptual analysis of a significant

disciplinary idea (..) with the specification of both successive patterns of

reasoning and the means of supporting their emergence." (pp. 83). In

other words, a domain-specific instructional theory is a theory which

predicts how to bring about a positive change in epistemic practice.

Quick glossary (full details in paper, see link bellow)