“… What do we have to do to know… Examine with our own criteria the test that someone else's criteria have made, or, what is safer, examine by ourselves. You cannot see a thing without looking at it. You cannot understand a thing without examining it. The examination is the eye of reason. Therefore we ourselves are… the natural environment of research. ”(Martí, 1975: XIX, 364)
Many times we see the things that surround us, but we do not look at them with a scrutinizing eye. Those of us in the field of school who dedicate ourselves to the task of educating the generations that will succeed us, observe the effects of the various phenomena with which we coexist, but rarely do we dedicate ourselves to looking for their causes and, sometimes, after repeating ourselves repeatedly that we can do nothing to change the established, we assume the attitude of leaving things as they are because nothing can be modified.
The methodology of "give it to someone who did not give you" is still swarming in a considerable number of schools and, despite the fact that an old-fashioned bolero never tires of repeating to us "… blame me for what happens…", we always seek, and boldly, to blame others. If students do not learn it is because they will be very bad, or because their parents do not take care of them, or because their intelligence quotients are affected, or because they live far from school, or because of anything that does not hurt, not even close, our activity as teachers or teachers.
When they ask us what are the most pressing problems of our daily work as educators, many reasons come to mind: the toilet does not work, the government does not take care of the education of children, there is no budget to buy new texts, there is no Internet connectivity, etc, etc, etc… And it is not that these are not problems that do not have to be addressed and, of course, solved; Rather, the most important problems of a school are in the quality of the learning that the students achieve and this is directly committed to the quality of the classes and extracurricular activities that the teachers develop.
Not resting until educators become researchers of their own pedagogical practice should be a priority objective of educational systems. But for this it is essential to implement a research training scheme that goes through the processes of initial and ongoing training.
The reflections that we share below are aimed at trying to simplify and make the process of construction of the theoretical design of an educational research more accessible. More than theorizing on the subject, we are interested in highlighting those issues that are basic for those who are starting in this important activity.
General considerations:
You should always start from a social problem that is going to be treated. As it will work in the educational context, the social problem must be related to difficulties that arise in the teaching-learning process (specifying the level of teaching and the subject in which the proposal will be made) or deficiencies related to the permanent training of the students. teachers. The characterization of the subject or subject that is taught is the basis to support the social problem that will be addressed. Among the most pressing social problems in Mexico in the educational field are:
- The third country within the OECD with the highest number of young people who neither study nor work (more than seven million Mexicans in this situation) Women have three more chances of being in this group than men. The last country within the OECD in expectation of graduation from high school (47%) 43% of the population aged 15 years or more does not have a complete basic education 56% of Mexicans evaluated in the Pisa Test are at levels 0 and 1 is say without the minimum essential skills in Language and Communication and Mathematics The results of the Planea test applied in preschool, basic and upper secondary education demonstrated that a minimum percent of students are at performance level 4 (which is where most should be located).This is the case in the subjects Language and Communication, Mathematics and Sciences. Only 3% of the indigenous population completes at least one year of
Bachelor's degree at the University.
- The use of technological devices for pedagogical purposes is insufficient and is often perceived by teachers and administrators as a distraction, which is why their prohibition in classrooms is frequent. A non-negligible number of teachers have poor development of their digital competences: A significant proportion of male and female teachers (one in three) obtained a barely satisfactory evaluation of their performance and therefore need a training process to improve their professional skills.
These problems, which are just some of those that affect Mexican education, can be translated within the narrow framework of the educational institution and the classroom, into more specific problems such as:
- Insufficient development of competencies at the different levels that make up reading comprehension (basic education, upper secondary) Insufficient development of skills for solving problems (basic education, upper secondary, higher) Insufficient development of competences for the production of written texts Difficulties in reading Sexuality education Difficulties in environmental education Difficulties in the development of professional competences of teachers Difficulties in the use of technological resources for educational purposes
To proceed with the construction of an educational research design, at least the following aspects must be taken into account:
Brief description of the problem: Reference should be made here to the social problem that is going to be treated. As it will work in the educational context, the social problem must be related to difficulties that arise in the teaching-learning process (specifying the level of teaching and the subject in which the proposal will be made) or deficiencies related to the permanent training of the students. teachers.
Research problem statement: The problem is what the researcher tries to solve. It can be posed in the form of a question, although it is not the only way to enunciate it. The problem arises from a situation of conflict between the ideal state of the object of investigation and the real state.
Suppose that the research object is: THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS OF READING COMPREHENSION IN EDUCATION
PRIMARY. The conflict situation occurs between an ideal state: "Reading is a daily practice among students in basic education and the development of reading skills is a key to good learning inside and outside the classroom" (SEP, 2011: Agreement 592 and Programs and Study Guides) and a real state: Schoolchildren who complete basic education have difficulties in using reading as a daily practice and, for the most part, fail to pass levels I and II of reading comprehension.
This leads to pose the research problem which can be done using a question: How to improve skills at the interpretive level of reading comprehension in the 4th grade of primary education?
However, two essential elements have yet to be defined: the object of investigation and the field of action. Establishing the differentiations between one and the other is essential for an adequate design of the research process.
In case it is handling the or UBJECT research is: The process of learning of the subject Language and Communication in basic education.It should be repaired in a detail of great importance: the object is larger, but we must not get confused and try to cover everything. We already know that the popular saying alerts us: "he who covers a lot, little squeezes." That is why it is stated that the object is the whole. The precision of the area to be worked on is much smaller. This is so so that the results obtained can be truly significant in the portion that has been selected to carry out the pedagogical intervention. That is why the field of action turns out to be a part of the research object that can have multiple and varied parts. But we only select one, the one that is conditioned by what we have stated in the research problem.
Taking into consideration what was pointed out in the example that the Field of Action has been handling would be: The skills at the interpretive level of reading comprehension in the 4th grade of primary education.
For its part, the objective is the governing category of the design of educational research. Some of its peculiarities are:
In the example that has been proposed in these notes, the General Objective could be stated as follows : Develop a system of learning activities to improve the development of skills at the interpretive level of reading comprehension in the 4th grade of the primary education.
An analysis of the relationships established between the indicated categories is presented in the following sheet:
The example that has been working is expressed graphically below:
After analyzing the previous categories, it is essential to stop at another aspect of great interest. All research starts from a hypothetical hypothesis or assumptions that is «… what we are looking for or trying to prove and can be defined as tentative explanations of the phenomenon under investigation formulated as propositions. (Sampieri / and / others, 1998: 74). Different variants are used for its establishment: hypothesis, idea to defend, One of the variants that is used for the posing of the hypothesis is the elaboration of scientific questions.
The questions scientific, as noted, are hypothetical assumptions and become the researcher guides. Generally they address the following aspects: the directionality of the theoretical studies on the research object, the diagnosis of the current situation that the field of action presents and the elaboration of the proposal that is made for the solution of the scientific problem posed. The scientific questions of the example that has been handled could be posed as follows:
The research tasks, on the other hand, will be congruent with the scientific questions. As its name indicates, the meaning of the word refers to the completion of a job in a certain time, therefore, its determination will specify the actions that must be undertaken to answer scientific questions.
In the case that the scientific tasks have been exemplified, they would be worded as follows:
Finally, this part of the design that we will call, only for methodological reasons, THEORETICAL DESIGN, will propose the type of result that we aspire to achieve. In the bibliography on the subject, different types of educational research results are enunciated: models, strategies, methodologies, methodological proposals, systematizations (theoretical and practical), methodological conceptions, systems, among others. Each of these results may have dissimilar typologies (eg pedagogical model, didactic model, educational model; training strategy, didactic strategy, methodological strategy, pedagogical strategy, etc). However, in the example that has been modeled throughout these notes, the result could be stated as follows:System of learning activities to improve the development of skills at the interpretive level of reading comprehension in the 4th grade of primary education.
The foregoing considerations do not constitute a straitjacket for the starting researcher. They are only suggestions that can help pave the way for the construction of theoretical design in educational research. They are not the only perspective that can be taken into consideration, nor are they finished material on the subject. They are notes on a broad and complex problem that will be enriched along the way with the contribution of "… everyone and for the good of all."
Bibliography:
- DOF (2011): AGREEMENT number 592 establishing the Articulation of Basic Education, at https://www.sep.gob.mx/work/models/sep1/Resource/9721849d-666e-48b78433-0eec1247f1ab/a592.pdfMartí, José (1975): Complete Works, Volume 19, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, Cuba Rodríguez, María A. (2011): "Strategy as a scientific result of educational research", in Scientific results in educational research, La Habana, Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 2011Rodríguez, María A. (2011): "The systematization as a scientific result of educational research" in the text "Interdisciplinary Research in Pedagogical Sciences", Havana, Editorial Pueblo y Educación; La Habana 2011, pp.74-95 Sampieri, Roberto / y / otros (1998): Research Methodology, Panamericana Formas e Impresos SA, Colombia, at https://doctoradonayarit.wikispaces.com/file/view/Sampieri,+Roberto+-+Metodologia+de+la+Investigacion+parte+1.pdfSEP (2011): Study programs 2011, Teacher's guide, Basic Education, Secondary, Spanish, Mexico, Accessed August 13, 2015 at
