Development of local theories in design-based research in mathematics education

Journal article

Abstract:: Design-based research (DBR) develops interventions and associated local theories about ways of supporting students’ learning of particular mathematical topics through iterative cycles of empirical investigation and retrospective analysis. Although DBR has been conducted in mathematics education for various topics and at different educational levels, the theorising processes that take place in DBR studies have received little attention. In the current conceptual paper, we address this issue by exploring how elements of a local theory in a DBR study are generated, revised, and organised over multiple research cycles. We first draw on relevant literature to develop a framework for representing the structure of a local theory in DBR, and we then apply this framework to examine and illustrate the incremental theorising process in one of our completed DBR studies. Our discussion shows how prior scholarship plays a range of roles in the development of a local theory in DBR and how these roles intersect with empirical investigation over the DBR cycles. We conclude by discussing how our framework can serve not only as a methodological tool for analysing theory development in DBR but also as a useful tool for supporting such development.

Files:: Komatsu_et_al_2025_Development_of_local.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: task design

theory development

intervention

assumption

local theory

design-based research
Pubs id:: 2092177
Local pid:: pubs:2092177
Deposit date:: 2025-02-26

Copyright holder:: Komatsu et al
Rights statement:: © The Author(s), 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

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