Design Principles for Science Education (Theme: Vaccination).
Heath education, vaccination teaching, design research, design principals.
Health education, in addition to the longstanding challenge of transpose the biomedical approach, behavioral change and disease cure education, currently faces a disbelief in science that ultimately affects some of the most important health measures, such as the vaccination. There has been a recent fall in the rate of vaccination coverage and one of the causes is this movement anti-science and anti-vaccine and the lack of awareness of the need to vaccinate even in the case of almost or already erratic diseases. Thus, it becomes important to rethink how this issue has been worked on and taught in schools. However, even in the face of such a scenario, few studies address this issue. Given this is that the present work was developed, thinking about studying guidelines (design principles) for teaching this subject. Throughout the work were developed, justified and evaluated, based on the design research methodology, three design principles that guided the development of a didactic sequence, applied in a real teaching situation. The applicability of these principles were evaluated, and two of them were evaluated as feasible, namely: (1) Adoption of a socioecological approach to health teaching and (2) Use of historical narratives regarding the process of development and use of Vaccines. The third principle (3) The use of an explicit approach to Science Characteristics, with an emphasis on the development of new technologies, needs to be rethought for the next cycle and further discussion of what is evidence and fact in science. We also believe that it is important to add the discussion of the obligation of vaccines. Thus, the principles were applied without the need for a large amount of time spent by the conducting teacher, and were thus considered as applicable. It is also necessary to rethink the amount of classes required for the application of the principles, since the four classes required for the application of this sequence were considered costly in view of the school calendar and its learning demands.