Design Experiments: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Creating Complex Interventions in Classroom Settings

The lion's share of my current research program is devoted to the study of learning in the blooming, buzzing confusion of inner-city classrooms. My high-level goal is to transform grade-school classrooms from work sites where students perform assigned tasks under the management of teachers into communities of learning ( Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989; Brown & Campione, 1990) and interpretation ( Fish, 1980), where students are given significant opportunity to take charge of their own learning. In my current work, I conduct what Collins (in press) refers to as design experiments, modeled on the procedures of design sciences such as aeronautics and artificial intelligence. As a design scientist in my field, I attempt to engineer innovative educational environments and simultaneously conduct experimental studies of those innovations. This involves orchestrating all aspects of a period of daily life in classrooms, a research activity for which I was not trained. My training was that of a classic learning theorist prepared to work with "subjects" (rats, children, sophomores), in strictly controlled labora­tory settings. The methods I have employed in my previous life are not readily transported to the research activities I oversee currently.