Research by Design - Learning by Doing

After being a teacher educator for some years, this Autumn I am a student learning to be a researcher: learning through listening and reflecting, reading and thinking aloud, writing…or blogging. Some of my colleagues will even be thinking through designing, researching through design and learning by doing.

The method of my project will not be research by design – but I hope to observe the leading characters of my study (kindergarten children) engaged in their design processes. Relationship between research and design has been a much discussed issue during the last months at the PhD-course. What does it mean when a research is done by, through, in or with design?

My opinion is that in research by design, the research and the design are two simultaneous processes that support each other, and feed into each other. Sometimes they merge and can not be separated, other times one (the researcher and the designer) has to choose a point of view, or rather which shoes to wear: the researcher’s or the designer’s.

Wearing three pears of shoes (as a designer, a teacher educator and a kindergarten researcher), in my transdisciplinary way of thinking, there are similarities between “research by design” and action research, as well as research by design and Pedagogical documentation - the way documentation has been used a as a method of development of pedagogical work in municipal kindergartens in Reggio Emilia. One changes modes back and forward from practice to research, learns, produces knowledge and solves practical problems in creative ways.