Teacher quality and quality teaching are crucial when we talk about quality matters in education. It has been exemplified by policy developments in many countries, including Australia and the US, through the adoption of standards-based reforms relating to teachers and teaching (Lewis et al., 2019). A variety of university-based teacher training and professional development initiatives are emerging worldwide in response to the policy vision. While the attempt at standardization can never be fully realized in practice, as they can never use the easy-to-measure characteristics to assess complex, ever-changing classrooms with unavoidable uncertainty (Biesta, 2014). This explains a turn toward practice-based teacher education (Zeichner, 2012) and a shift from passive and intermittent professional development to that which is “active, consistent, based on the teaching environment, supported by peers in a professional learning community” (Stewart, 2014, p. 28).

Educational Design Research (EDR) is a genre of research that fits the substantive aspects outlined above, for its being situated in real educational contexts, focusing on the design and testing of interventions, using mixed methods, involving multiple iterations, stemming from a partnership between researchers and practitioners, yielding design principles; and concerned with an impact on practice (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012). With these characteristics, EDR can involve teachers and researchers collaborating throughout the process of studying teaching and learning in a specific subject area, to improve both teaching practices and theoretical understandings through cycles of testing and refining (McKenney & Reeves, 2019). Accordingly, we can assume that EDR can be a form of teacher professional learning during this process (Juuti, et al., 2017). It has been proven in some studies (e.g., Dunn et al., 2019; Lim, 2022) but there is no paper that reviews the studies on this topic. 

It is not easy to improve teacher quality and teaching quality. According to the review, using EDR as a viable alternative can change teachers and their practices over a long-term, deliberately designed process. As a counterbalance to the performance-based professional development in the past that is evidence-based, manageable, and sustainable, this research advocates more integrated, job-embedded professional learning, demonstrating “the power of protest” as seen in teacher education discourse. In this study, we suggest design heuristics or learning principles for EDR or other EDR-like professional learning initiatives that can be used by policymakers, teacher educators, and school leaders. A further contribution of this research is to examine the existing knowledge base of EDR and build up knowledge of EDR as a form of teacher professional learning. This can inform future research to systematically explore teachers’ learning in the context of EDR or to notice teachers' learning as a vital aspect alongside their EDR studies.

Thus, this research documents the trends in the literature and offers a groundbreaking look at the structural and content patterns in the knowledge base of teacher professional learning within EDR, by using a topographic methodology. The methodology is recommended when the available literature is insufficient and lacks essential findings needed for synthesis (Walker & Hallinger, 2015). Although EDR has been a mature research area, EDR as a form of teacher professional learning has not been adequately explored. Teachers’ learning has been acknowledged when EDR is used to design, develop, and evaluate a variety of interventions, such as educational products, processes, programs, or policies (McKenney & Reeves, 2019), while only a few studies intentionally explore teachers’ professional learning in the context of EDR interventions. Both conditions will be examined in this study to investigate teacher professional learning. Topographical analysis is thus an appropriate method for reviewing literature in such a complex, newly developing research field. With the methodology, this study systematically analyses 131 peer-reviewed journal articles, sourced from Scopus, WoS, ProQuest, and ERIC databases, and published up to 2022.

The literature maintained a steady growth from its initial publication in 2006 until 2018, culminating in a surge that began in 2019 and reached its peak in 2022. However, a gap exists in the literature across national settings and systems, with the US dominating publications, followed by Australia, Canada, Korea, and Singapore. Despite the limited number of publications, the fact that authors from over 36 countries have contributed to this field shows its global importance. These studies varied in their data collection and analysis methods based on their research purposes. Out of the 131 EDR studies, 83 utilized qualitative research methods, 34 employed mixed methods, and 14 used quantitative methods. This suggests a wider range of methods employed in EDR methodology. In addition to the structural patterns from publication metrics, the review yielded three prominent themes. First, it is the role of teachers in EDR. While some collaborations involve data extractions where teachers act solely as practitioners, others involve clinical partnerships where teachers are also collaborators who work with researchers to design, conduct, and report the inquiry. However, it is rare for teachers to become practitioner-researchers who reach co-learning agreements with researchers to advance the inquiry together. Second, it is the changes of teachers in EDR. It is found that teachers change their knowledge, perspectives, emotions, and practices in different partnerships. Third, the influences that impact teachers’ change in EDR, range from personal, community, and organizational to external factors. Finally, a framework is proposed to understand how teacher learning occurs during EDR by linking the three themes to varying partnerships.

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