Design Research in Early Literacy within the Zone of Proximal

Abstract: Despite intentions to the contrary, insights on pedagogically appropriate innovations with representative teachers in everyday school settings are severely limited. In part, this is because (design) research is often conducted at the bleeding edge of what is possible, exploring innovative uses of new technologies and/or emerging theories, while insufficient research and development work focuses on what is practical, today. This leaves a problematic gap between what could be useful research in theory, and what can be useful research in practice. This paper calls for (design) researchers to attend to factors that determine if and how innovations are understood, adopted and used by teachers and schools, and gives one example of how this was tackled in the domain of early literacy. Across ten studies, researchers collected data that helped shape an intervention that can be implemented by representative teachers, for diverse learners, in varied school settings. Purpose Educational (design) research strives to develop theoretical understanding that will ultimately improve the quality of teaching and learning. But even when research contributes to programs that are robustly designed and promising in specific settings, most prove difficult to scale up (cf. Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011). I