New revelations in many scientific domains are revealing to us, not necessarily an entire break down of the order of things but surely the inadequacies of many of our models and assumptions. A case in point is how we moved from Newtonian principles to Quantum mechanics. Newtonian theories still exist and have validity but they are no longer seen as an all encompassing truth. It appears that our nature's are such that we need fixed ontologies and epistemologies around which all other ideas should turn in the fashion of Copernicus and those that don't will suffer a Galileon fate. But nature's complexity always wins through and brings about in us the changes necessary to enlarge our thinking. We are a product of nature so we can adapt and change is the only thing we can be certain about.
Design Based Research is another example of a change that came about through the breaking down of a model and assumption and as it simply matches an ontology of the moment we can expect it to evolve even further or possibly fall away all together. Time will tell. Design Based Research is to Clinical Research what Quantum Mechanics is to Newtonian. Design Based Research has the Observer Effect and the Uncertainty Principle inherent to it. It encompasses the Chaos theory. As I look at Design Based Research it changes, as an experimenter enters the classroom and looks at her students they change. Our fears dictate that we must control and predict so a Designer predicts a learning outcome and finds the evidence from the data for it in the manner of Bartlett, but chaos theory knows this is just a human guise
Design Based Research emerged as a response to the realisation that the Behavioural Model of Learning that had for so long dominated as a model was inadequate to explain the complete nature of learning. But our minds are such that we need to fill a vacuum so this model was replaced with the Cognitive one. Cognition could still be tested in the laboratory so elements of Research remained until the Constructivist approaches began to take hold and the Laboratory setting began to show it's weaknesses. All mayhem broke out when the experimenters moved into the messy classrooms where they lost control over their variables. Clinical experiments in a laboratory with controlled variables satisfied a certain epistemology, but when findings were extended to the classroom situation these theories did not hold up. Some practitioners, such as Brown, were brave enough to go and look for the reasons why by stepping into the classroom, letting go of control to see what happened. One thing that happened was the experimenter was knocked off their pedestal as holder of knowledge and forced into a relationship with the subject where they had to give the subject a voice and listen. Barab in preparing for Quest Atlantis spent 3 years listening after a disastrous experiment in a university setting where none of his predictions came true and he finally had to forego the whole endeavour , but he had learnt a valuable lesson. Another thing that happened was the experimentor saw that in a classroom setting there are sub-groups that had been ignored up until now in the design of education or stereo-typed to such an extent that that their true nature's had become invisible. They had been excluded from the experiment as they interfered with the theoretical outcomes. When they were removed the theory worked, however when the theory went back into the environment THEY were still there! One can remove a sub-group from a theory but not from a classroom . Design Based Research has the potential for being inclusive of all but a dominant attitude is very hard to change and there are still flagrant examples of designers not understanding the importance of inclusion to their outcomes. Case in point: Virtual Singapura being developed in an all boys school. Have the Kohlberg – Gilligan findings been so quickly forgotten? A Design Based Research conducted by Roschelle et al. (2010) deliberately excluded a sub-group of students deemed "problematic" and on whom their assumptions did not hold. They never questioned their assumptions or design.
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