1 Designing and researching technology enhanced learning

of research to be made transparent. Despite intentions to the contrary, research on technology enhanced learning (TEL) that truly serves current educational practice is more rare than it is common (cf. Reeves, Herrington & Oliver, 2005). Insights on pedagogically appropriate uses of educational technology for representative teachers in everyday school settings are severely limited. In part, this is because (design) research is conducted at the bleeding edge of what is technologically possible- exploring innovative uses of new and emerging technologies. There is no disputing that such work is greatly needed to seek out new ways to potentially enhance the quality of teaching and learning. However, in the excitement of exploring what is possible, tomorrow, there is insufficient research and development work focusing on what is practical, today. This leaves a problematic gap between what could be effective TEL in theory, and what can be effective TEL in practice. With the aim of generating ‘usable knowledge ’ (cf. Lagemann, 2002) and creating innovations that truly serve learning in practice, this paper calls for designers/researchers of TEL to devote attention to not only fine-grained issues of pupil learning and instruction, but also to broader factors that determine if and how innovations are understood, adopted and used by teachers and schools. Allowing these issues to steer the design of TEL innovations is necessary to yield innovations that can feasibly be implemented outside of (often highly enabling) research and development trajectories