Case-holder:

There are 6 design frames in Educational Research:

1. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
2. LONGITUDINAL STUDIES & SURVEYS
3. CASE STUDY
4. ETHNOGRAPHY
5. ACTION RESEARCH
6. ACTIVITY THEORY


I will add links that go to pages with further details of each one.

For knowledge creation:
First is mind mapping and creativity techniques in order to create and enact thought-experiments to get a good grasp of the qualitative difference of the (above) categories; and thus later you can use these kind of categories in order to facilitate a merger of old knowledge (these firstly new categories and now part of your working models -> = old knowledge) and new areas that don't fully apply to these categories.

This means the first stage is normally messy and very very messy actually; but you gotta get through it with all the questioning and thinking and writing and mind mapping and thought experimenting before you can create a sort of "magical" crystallized conception of the new concepts - this kind of crystallized thinking is merely what happens when you combine new information (first step: take it all apart and think about each separate part in turn in order to understand exactly what the new information is qualitatively) and then put it all back together, combining it with your previous knowledge (the final product of which is the kind of crystallized knowledge that I talked about above; but this kind of crystallized knowledge only comes after a large period of time has been spent slowing shoving new bits of information into your unconscious mind, the same unconscious mind which sorts and sifts (only when you are sleeping in REM sleep or other non-focused activities e.g in the shower/exercising/walking) slowly and slowly going about trying to find new meaningful connections. Thus now we are in the middle of jumble mumble mess of the new part 3 in first year Masters; but later on this kind of perfection in the form of crystallized knowledge will come. Until then, wait and follow the confusing but eventually informative mess of questioning and mind-mapping comes along.