Aciertos y desaciertos en la implementación del design research para el desarrollo de una innovación educativa en biología

Abstract

The results of a design research, of the development study type, whose main objective was to identify design principles of a didactic sequence for the learning of thermoregulation in terrestrial vertebrates by modeling the phenomenon as a biological mechanism, are presented. Three central stages were followed: preliminary research, prototyping and retrospective evaluation. The intervention, i.e. the didactic sequence, in its first prototype was designed in a collaborative group of practicing teachers and according to eight principles, then it was applied and reformulated iteratively (two cycles) according to the proposed educational objective. In the preliminary research, the stage of which results are presented in this paper, the justification criteria and objectives of the sequence were defined, and substantive and procedural aspects of nine design principles for the sequence were identified. During this process, the relevance of design research as a methodological reference was reflected upon, and from this, it was identified that the collaborative participation of practicing secondary school teachers is central in the development of this type of educational innovations and constitutes a central element to reduce the gaps between the community of specialists, the results of research and classroom practice. It was also recognized that the collection of extensive records generates a wide variety of observable aspects that limits the analysis and may affect the achievement of the educational and research objective. It is suggested to develop the first prototyping phase in this type of study with smaller groups of people as a case study to delimit the attributes to be analyzed according to the educational objective.