The role of concretization in acquiring design knowledge

This research explored the nature of design knowledge by examining the processes in which graduate students in education learned to design educational technologies. We developed two rubrics to assess: (a) the degree to which students were able to translate their design ideas into concrete design artifacts (concretization rubric), and (b) the degree to which they designed artifacts that followed a socio-constructivist pedagogical approach versus a teacher-centered transmissionst model (epistemology rubric). Outcomes indicated that as students developed their concretization skills, they were able to become aware to and reduce gaps between their "theoretical" and "applied" epistemologies. By making their design ideas more concrete, students were able to carry out productive negotiations about these ideas with instructors and peers, and to explore them in relation to theory and to expert design knowledge.