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Originating from the learning sciences community, design-based research (DBR) is attracting interest from many educational researchers including those focused on mathematics. Beyond its research role, it is being seen as a collaborative way to engage teachers in deep professional development leading not only to changes in skill but also in purpose. Previous reviews of the approach, however, have offered only cautious optimism for the capacity of DBR to support widespread or scalable change. This paper will use methods drawn from the digital humanities and social sciences to explore patterns relating to regional differences, theoretical underpinnings, practical implementation and methodological choice in recent DBR research in the domain of mathematics education. The findings suggest that much of the work presented as DBR might be better characterized as 'implementation studies' as they contain only limited commitment to theoretical development capable of supporting the scaling of innovation. The exceptions appear to occur in settings with well-developed research capacity which recognizes the need for ontological innovation of theory whilst iteratively and comprehensively exploring the complexities of authentic learning interventions. An example of a rich mathematical research study using DBR is provided to point to the potential for this methodology to achieve its overarching aims more fully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial reasoning has been shown to be an important, trainable cognitive skillset for developing successful engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), but little empirical work has been conducted in the context of digitally mediated pedagogies. This paper reports on a study into the effectiveness of a technologically enhanced STEM program on the spatial reasoning of a cohort of year 7 students (n = 107). The students undertook five digitally based activities over the period of a week and were assessed on their spatial reasoning development and attitudes towards STEM prior and subsequent to the intervention. Results indicate that the week of learning activities had an impact on attitudes towards STEM and had a positive impact on overall spatial skills. However, no statistically significant improvements were found within the spatial sub-skills or in relation to specific activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging technologies offer an opportunity for the development, at the institutional level, of quality processes with greater capacity to enhance learning in higher education than available through current quality processes. These systems offer the potential to extend use of learning analytics in institutional-level quality processes in addition to the widespread focus on business analytics, and to deliver well-constructed mixes of information from different data sources. Borrowed from music amplification, the term fold-back is proposed as a way to describe such a mix. This paper begins the design-research project of designing effective fold-back systems by expanding the theoretical assumptions about learning embedded in higher education quality processes. A number of theories building on Vygotsky's cultural-historical approach are discussed to imagine quality in higher education in terms of what students actually do and how they engage in addition to what the institution does. The discussion is summarised in a fold-back matrix capturing the sorts of evaluation questions the systems might address. The paper concludes by providing two initial design sketches for re-purposing emerging technologies with the capacity to support expanded quality processes in education. These sketches are based on the Experience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) and Dedoose technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]