An alternative research methodology is presented which focuses on the aims and values of education while attending to the learner as an elaborate, dynamic, everchanging total system. A summary covers the reactive, preactive, proactive, and spiralling learner systems, each of which meet the definitional system requirement of being dynamic, having a goal, and having interdependent and interrelated components. Implications of this view for research are examined. The description of the research methodology, which is based on Beckwith's 1983 theoretical/conceptual paradigm, elucidates its underlying assumptions, focus, nature, and management. Discussion then covers the roles of the investigator, subject, manager, and design structure during operation of the research methodology. Three purposes of the design structure are described: to facilitate solutions to educational problems, to attend to the elaborate nature of learners as dynamic changing individuals, and to effect research reliability and validity. A specific account is provided of how the methodology would be operationalized, suggesting how validity, reliability, reproducibility, bias, and effects would be addressed during the process. The roles of the components of the dynamic design structure are also examined. Four figures and a 32-item reference list are included. (LMM)