2004 Educational Psychologist, 39(4), 
URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hedp20/39/4#.U1BWd_ldXBw 

2004 Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1)
URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hlns20/13/1#.U1BbAvldXBw

Collins, A., Joseph, D., & Bielaczyc, K. (2004). Design research: Theoretical and methodological issues. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 15-42.

Design-based research (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992) is an emerging paradigm for the study of learning in context through the systematic design and study of instructional strategies and tools. Good DBR exhibits five characteristics:

1. the central goals of designing learning environments and developing theories or "prototheories" of learning are intertwined;
2. development and research take place through continuous cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign (Cobb, 2001; Collins, 1992);
3. research on designs must lead to sharable theories that help communicate relevant implication to practitioners and other educational designers (cf. Brophy, 2002);
4. research must account for how designs function in authentic settings; not only document success or failure but also focus on interactions that refine our understanding of the learning issues involved;
5. the development of such accounts relies on methods that can document and connect processes of enactment to outcomes of interest.

DBR methods focus on designing and exploring the whole range of designed innovations: artifacts as well as less concrete aspects such as activity structures, institutions, scaffolds, and curricula. Importantly, DBR goes beyond merely designing and testing particular interventions. Interventions embody specific theoretical claims about teaching and learning, and reflect a commitment to understanding the relationships among theory, designed artifacts, and practice. At the same time, research on specific interventions can contribute to theories of learning and teaching. (p.5)

In DBR, practitioners and researchers work together to produce meaningful changes in contexts of practice (e.g., classrooms, after-school programs, teacher on-line communities). (p. 6)

The overarching, explicit concern in DBR for using methods that link processes of enactment to outcomes has power to generate knowledge that directly applies to educational practice. The value of attending to context is not simply that it produces a better understanding of an intervention, but also that it can lead to improved theoretical accounts of teaching and learning. The intention of DBR in education is to inquire more broadly into the nature of learning in a complex system and to refine generative or predictive theories of learning. (p. 7)