Design-based research to understand and improve the educational practices

Abstract

In Design-Based Research (DBR) one studies educational interventions to promote learning or systemic change and to understand the underlying processes. The focus of studies may be on students’ learning, teachers’ practice, development of curriculum or of educational materials, professional development, or organizational change. This research has great potential to produce relevant results for educational practice but also has its own difficulties and problems. In this article we present DBR as a research methodology, indicating its origin and development, main features, experimentation cycles, the relationships between DBR and other kinds of research and its main varieties. We also review the critiques made to DBR and the difficulties in carrying it out. Finally, we analyze the way how it has been put into practice in research carried out in Portugal in Didactics of Mathematics in studies in which the authors assume this research methodology. We point the main features, contributions, and strong and weak points of these studies for the production of knowledge. We conclude by indicating that it is important that researchers improve the methodological procedures and the capacity of theoretical elaboration in order to produce more robust results that may be integrated into educational practice.