Research and Development Projects with ICT and students as learning designers in Primary Schools: A methodological challenge

In this paper we present some methodological challenges that emerged during the process of shaping the research design for the comprehensive and complex research project Children as learning designers in a digital school. The project is the realization of our proposal to a research call from the Danish Ministry of Education named Development projects and pilot school experiments (Udviklingsprojekter med demonstrationsskoleforsøg vedr. it i folkeskolen – see Undervisningsministeriet 2013) in the spring 2013.
The call was based on a governmental decision to allocate 500 million DKR to increase the use of ICT in the Danish primary school from 2012-2015 combined with an increased focus on fulfilling learning objectives and to build competencies. This effort is on the one side due to a decade of disappointing Danish PISA results regarding reading, writing and math; on the other side due to the need to strengthen the populations’ digital literacy and 21st century competencies. The call’s scope was research and development projects as pilot school experiments in relation to five selected areas. The selected projects should contribute with new generalizable and practice oriented knowledge of how: • ICT supports students learning, • ICT release time for more teaching, and • teachers digital literacy impact on the role of ICT in the educational practice. Further the call required collaboration between universities and university colleges in order to disseminate knowledge and new practices to the Danish teacher educations.