Incidence of Design-Based Research Methodology in Science Education Articles: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The design-based research (DBR) methodology has been standing out in the field of educational research promising to adapt to different scenarios and boost the development of educational innovations. However, 17 years after the beginning of the use of this methodology, there are still doubts about its potentiality. Given this, it is necessary to ascertain in which contexts this methodology has been used and what are the educational advances related to it. Thus, bibliometric mapping was carried out in this paper to generate indicators of studies on DBR, to indicate its relationship with the field of Science Education and situate Brazilian production in the international context. The study identified the distribution of publications by year, according to the number of publications, the main journals where these articles were published, the authors nationality, the most cited articles, the main keywords, and the network collaboration between authors. Data showed that the last five years have been the most promising for DBR publications and the North Americans were those who published more about this methodology. Despite the growing number of publications, the field of Science Education still makes little use of this methodology. The main applications found in DBR were related to teacher education, student motivation, and the use of information and communication technologies on teaching and learning.

Design-Based Research in the Educational Field: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The author selected 162 papers and, in this study, we analyzed 163. However, more recent studies pointed out that DBR is attracting the attention of researchers around the world, particularly in the last five years [13].…”

“…To support the use of the DBR methodology, most of the studies used reference authors who have been advocating the potential of this approach in educational research processes. The analysis identified important authors who have seen their work in this field widely recognized and who are also highlighted by [13] in a bibliometric analysis of the use of RBD in science research.…”

Professional development for STEM educators: A bibliometric analysis of the recent progress

“…Bibliometric analysis has been successfully applied in prior research in many disciplines, including in educational research (e.g., Aparicio et al, 2021; Assefa & Rorissa, 2013; Avila‐Garzon et al, 2021; Barbosa & Galembeck, 2022; Cividatti et al, 2021; Esen et al, 2020; Gómez‐Carrasco et al, 2022; Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020; Liu & Wang, 2019; Marín‐Marín et al, 2021; Ye et al, 2019). Thus, the use of this methodology is motivated by the gap in the literature so as to conduct comprehensive bibliographical analysis that adds a new contribution to prior studies by examining the progress and trends of STEM‐TPD educational research.…”

“…VOSviewer has functions to customise visualisations of data, and offers different high‐resolution outputs, including overlay and density visualisation (van Eck & Waltman, 2010, 2014). These two cutting‐edge bibliometric tools have been utilised in many recent bibliometric studies (e.g., Aparicio et al, 2021; Assefa & Rorissa, 2013; Avila‐Garzon et al, 2021; Barbosa & Galembeck, 2022; Cividatti et al, 2021; Esen et al, 2020; Gómez‐Carrasco et al, 2022; Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020; Liu & Wang, 2019; Marín‐Marín et al, 2021; Ye et al, 2019). Consequently, it was decided that these two reliable tools would be used to perform the bibliometric analysis.…”