In recent years, the gap between educational research and school practice has become more and more a thorn in the flesh of Dutch educational policy makers. Cooperation of educational researchers and practitioners is increasingly valued as a way of bridging this gap. Especially design research is seen as a way to shape such cooperation, as it ideally results in outcomes that are useful for both educational theory and practice. The two main workshop questions are:

·         Does design research fill the gap between educational research and educational practice, thereby doing justice to both its scientific and practical objectives?

·         How may researchers respond to the double agenda of design research?

Our own experiences and findings in design research will scaffold the input for the workshop.

Three cases will show how the researchers had a hard time balancing the input of the teachers and their own input. Too much input from the researcher seemed to lead to less ownership of the design products on the part of the teachers. And too little input from the researcher endangered the goals of the study, since the teachers themselves did not incorporate the theoretical parameters in the design products. We will proceed the workshop by means of a jig saw. The participants will be asked to form small groups around the three presented cases and discuss them. Then, the participants will change groups so that every new group has at least one member of each initial small group. The new groups reflect on the main workshops questions. Finally, as a whole group we will discuss the answers of every group in order to reach shared conclusions. As presenters we will add our own findings regarding the questions asked.

In recent years, the gap between educational research and school practice has become more and more a thorn in the flesh of Dutch educational policy makers. They plea for schools to attend to the outcomes of educational research and for researchers to present their research findings in ways that are accessible for school managers and teachers as well (Onderwijsraad, 2006). Up till now schools hardly make use of educational research outcomes. Part of the reason for this lies in the fact that most research findings are barely of any use for educational practice: they force an open door, are unclear about how the knowledge may be put into practice, and results are often too context specific. However another part of the reason can be found in some teachers’ negative perception of educational research, or the fact that most teachers don’t know how to make use of it’s outcomes (Broekkamp & Van Hout-Wolters, 2005). Cooperation of educational researchers and practitioners is increasingly valued as a way of bridging the gap between educational research and school practice. Especially design research is seen as a way to shape such cooperation, as it ideally results in outcomes that are useful for both educational theory and practice. However, does design research fill the gap between educational research and educational practice, thereby doing justice to both its scientific and practical objectives? In our experience, the quality of the research outcomes of design research are strongly dependent on the ways in which the researcher takes up his or her cooperative role.

In this workshop we would like to discuss the complex role of the researcher in design studies, regarding its double agenda. Our own experiences with design research will scaffold this discussion. Our research focuses on the school as a community of learners for students and teachers. From the literatures on communities of practice and communities of learners, we distilled four parameters to design and describe a community of learners for both students and teachers: 1) shared learning, 2) meaningful learning, 3) reflective learning, and 4) learning for transfer. We assumed that these features constitute the parameters for learning environments in which learning and developmental processes at teacher and student level are linked. In other words, we assumed that we, as researchers, had to create learning environments for the teachers on the basis of the same four features as the teachers in turn had to create for their students. As researchers we pursue four aims:

• contributing to the conceptualization of the concept of communities of learners at the level of the classroom and the school
• empirical validation of the operationalization of the school as a community of learners for students and teachers
• the development of instructional designs fostering communities of learners (two years, cyclical approach)
• evaluation of the instructional designs for students with regard to their effect on student motivation and quality of learning.

These research aims met the practical aims of the cooperated and participated schools. In the workshop we will present the case of one of these schools. Management and teachers aimed at innovating their own education, by designing and implementing cross-curricular series of lessons (aligned with the concept of community of learners) in order to enhance students vocational and language competences and motivation for this learning. In addition the management aimed at supporting this innovations by facilitating and enhancing teachers cooperative learning.

      In sum, the role of the researcher in our design research was on the one hand to stimulate teachers ownership and guidance in designing learning environments that foster a community of learners for learners, and on the other hand to investigate the quality (and effects) of the designed learning environments (on the motivation and quality of learning of the students).

In the workshop we start of by setting the scene of our design research. We present three cases. Cases differ in reasons why and how the researchers had a hard time balancing the input of the teachers and their own input. In general, too much input from the researcher seemed to lead to less ownership of the design products on the part of the teachers. And too little input from the researcher endangered the goals of the study, since the teachers themselves did not incorporate the parameters in the design products.

We will proceed the workshop by means of a typical learning community activity: to jig saw. The participants will be asked to form small groups. Each group is invited to discuss one of dilemmas presented in the cases. Then, the participants will change groups so that every new group has at least one member of each initial small group. The new groups reflect on the main workshops questions:

·         Does design research fill the gap between educational research and educational practice, thereby doing justice to both its scientific and practical objectives?

·         How may researchers respond to the double agenda of design research?

Finally, as a whole group we will discuss the answers of every group in order to reach shared conclusions. As presenters we will add our own findings regarding the questions asked.

Broekkamp, H & Van Hout-Wolters, B. (2005). De kloof tussen onderwijsonderzoek en onderwijspraktijk. (The gap between educational research and educational practice). Amsterdam: Vossius Pers Uva

Onderwijsraad (2006). Naar meer evidence based onderwijs (Towards more evidence based education). Den Haag: uitgave van de Onderwijsraad