Outline of a Pattern-Oriented Research Strategy for Complex Learning Scenarios

Describing and explaining learning in complex settings makes high demands on educational research strategies. This paper roughly outlines a pattern-oriented research strategy, aiming to bridge the gap between theory and practice and facilitating improvements in complex social settings like collaborative learning. The ideas underlying this approach are rooted in theorybased evaluation, Realistic Evaluation and explanatory case studies. It is argued for a systemcentered view and the role of generative mechanisms as a focal point of inquiry. After an explication of the underlying assumptions a brief description of a pattern-oriented research strategy is presented. Furthermore we discuss strength and weaknesses and propose patternoriented research as a reasonable completion to other research strategies.