[quoting Rieber's paper] Many issues on this topic remain, such as the proper role of research. (I see at least two, by the way. One is the traditional role of research contributing to the literature. A second, though less recognized, is the role that research plays for the researcher, as a source of ideas and invention.)
I'd like to pass on a perspective on research, given to me in an interview last year with Dr. John Carroll of Virginia Tech. I had asked him how future research could contribute to the field of Minimalism and he replied (and I paraphrase):
It's often naively assumed that research should go out and discover all this new stuff that can then be applied to practice. Not enough research is done to detail and describe existing good practices. I believe that life is minimalist and that people are designing solutions that work and are recognized as working, but no one has the time to articulate or discover why they work. Research can contribute by studying these training and design techniques that we know work and trying to describe and document how and why.
I am applying this advice to Instructional Technology by directing my research at how software development professionals employ usability testing in designing products for ease of use. I am articulating usability testing as qualitative research and studying how practitioners validate findings with just the few subjects typically used. I am then applying how this "rigorized" (my apologies) approach can be used to conduct formative evaluations of educational software.
With this approach to research in mind, we can say that one of its roles is to "define and advance practices." Maybe that's inherent in "contributing to the literature."