A situated perspective on the usefulness of design principles

In educational design research, design principles are usually formulated at a general level, as abstractions derived from practice. However, studies within different research traditions, including phenomenology, situated knowledge, practice theory, and workplace learning, delineate a view of teachers' knowledge-in-practice as concretely realised in situated agency. This raises the question of how useful abstract guidelines are for teachers, experienced and novice. To answer this question, the authors combine a theoretical investigation with reflections on an ongoing empirical example of learning design practice in higher education. Theoretically, they use Dohn's analysis of knowledge-in-practice as a unity of propositional, practical, and experiential knowledge of which the latter two are tacit. This unity forms a practical embodied perspective. For explicated design principles to become useful, they must be integrated in the practical perspective and anchored in the situated agency of the person. Juxtaposing theoretical investigation and empirical reflections, the authors investigate to what extent design principles can set an overall direction in course design, and how examples can “fill out” the meaning of the principles with tacit practical and experiential knowledge.