Linking research and practice: Educational design research

This chapter describes how an Educational Design Research (EDR) approach was employed to design a context based professional development (PD) program tested in practice to support teacher educators to integrate ICT in their teaching of pre-service primary school mathematics teachers in Ethiopia. In addition, the researchers’ experience of using EDR to develop and design a context based PD program that was responsive to a particular context and stakeholders is described. The chapter is organised in four sections. It begins with a description of EDR in the background section followed by an illustration of the process of choosing the right methodology carefully in the second section. The third section illustrates the processes of conducting EDR along with challenges in using EDR. The final section presents the potential of using EDR in educational setting. In each section, the points made are illustrated by describing how the principles and philosophical roots of EDR were attended to in the research project showcased.