Educational Design Research for Oracy Development: Why, What, How?

Educational Design Research (EDR) is a genre of study in which the iterative development of solutions to practical and complex educational problems provides the setting for scientific inquiry. The solutions can be educational products, processes, programmes, or policies. EDR not only targets solving significant problems facing educational practitioners, but at the same time it seeks to discover new knowledge that can inform the work of others facing similar problems. Working systematically and simultaneously toward these dual goals is perhaps the most defining feature of EDR. The process typically ensues in multiple iterations of analysis and exploration, design and construction, and evaluation and reflection. When structured well, insights from each phase are valuable in their own right, and also contribute to the overall goals of the study. This chapter seeks to clarify the nature of EDR by considering its origins, elaborating its characteristics, and sharing two examples related to oracy development. It is based on a keynote presentation given at the symposium entitled Fostering and Assessing Oracy in Foreign Language Education: Perspectives from Practice-Oriented and Design-Based Research at the University of Münster in June 2021.