Design-Based Research for Integrating Child Rights Education into Religious Education in Germany

A pioneering research paradigm for linking teaching research with lesson design

Abstract

Design-Based Research (DBR) has emerged as a widely accepted methodological framework in educational research worldwide, as it is a sustainable research paradigm for overcoming the frequently observed gap between research and educational practice (Reinmann, 2022; Tinoca et al., 2022). I use The Rights of the Child and the School Subject of Religious Education (CRE4RE) project as an illustrative example of DBR’s potential to help close the theory-practice gap in the area of children's rights education (CRE) in religious education (RE). To do so, I link classroom research and lesson design. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the three interdependent project phases, which are based on the three steps of the research process model by McKenney and Reeves (2019). In the second part, I transfer a teaching module into practice to demonstrate how children's rights perspectives can be successfully integrated into RE. Finally, I identify project-specific opportunities and challenges in the use of the DBR approach to point out further design-based research perspectives, which favor a sustainable practical transfer of the double theory-practice output. I transferred a prototyped learning module into RE and tested and empirically evaluated it in a sample of N = 88 children and found substantial differences in the empathy scale’s mean values, which also differed by gender. The article shows how a DBR approach can be used to integrate CRE into RE, thereby also highlighting the forward-looking significance of the research paradigm for RE and for the interlinking of teaching research and lesson design.