Using learning materials for design-based interventions

This article considers a methodological issue concerning the use of learning materials for interventions in design-based research. When the researcher uses existing or creates new didacticised learning materials for research purposes and tests their applicability in authentic contexts, many variables are in play. When using or designing a learning material a lot of choices have to be made and effects are difficult to isolate. The advantage of using learning materials for interventions is that results could have high ecological validity.
In the article this methodological issue is exemplified through a research project using and developing digital learning materials for developing literacy in the early grades. One of many important choices to be made in elaborating this learning material concerns which texts should be used for supporting students’ literacy development in the lower grades. This issue is very important in general – and a subject of controversy. It is argued that the choice of texts depends on which theory of reading and which definition of readability are used, which
in turn depends on the design for learning and the scaffolding which frames the student’s encounter with the text. Two theories of word reading, dual-mechanism and connectionist, are introduced, compared, and their practical consequences for scaffolding students’ independent reading and literacy acquisition are analysed along with the consequences for
choosing instructional texts. The choice of texts and the definition of readability may be the one thing that makes the intervention using the digital learning material unsuccessful – or it might contribute to achieving the desired goals. The effect of this particular choice and the other choices in the intervention are difficult to determine.