This is the project “Didactic decisions based on scientific consilience”, an initiative financed by the Regional Government of Biobío. We talked with directors, teachers and professionals who travel to UdeC every Saturday morning to take the program, in order to innovate in the classrooms and workshops of their high schools.
Technical-Vocational secondary education tends to be lagging for innovations and to be seen separately from Scientific-Humanistic education. But this is changing hand in hand with an innovative postgraduate course that the Faculty of Education of the University of Concepción is dictating.
We are referring to the program “Pedagogy for Professional Technical Teaching Teachers, Didactic Decisions Based on Scientific Consilience”, which began in April and aims to train directors, teachers, professionals and technicians of technical-professional establishments, to change the articulation between the subjects of the general training plan (Language and Literature, Mathematics and Sciences for Citizenship) with the technical specialties. The objective is to unite the different pedagogical disciplines, giving greater scientific support to decision-making in the classroom, as explained by the project director, Dr. Abelardo Castro.
A journey to knowledge
Classes are held on Saturdays and bring together diverse teams from different high schools in Biobío, including teachers from outside the province of Concepción. Tatiana Carrasco She is one of the teachers who travels every weekend from Birth to UdeC to continue her training: “The trip is sacrificed, but you pay with the classes,” she laughs along with her other colleagues.
This teacher teaches History and Geography at the Municipal Lyceum of Birth; quite a challenge, he adds, “because the focus of the students is to work in the industries of the area. They are very practical: we want to prepare them for life and they for work. Most are of low socioeconomic status, come from single-parent families and have problems associated with that. So we must adjust the way we deliver our subjects; we must approach education according to their reality”, she contextualizes.
In this sense, for Carrasco and his colleagues the posttitle has been revealing: “it gives us other perspectives and strategies to put into practice. In addition, it has been an interesting experience that a university with a long history such as the UdeC deals with the teaching of the technical-professional area”.
Alexis Espinoza and Leonel Jara They also travel to Concepción to continue their training. Both professionals from the engineering area teach at the Samuel Vivanco Parada Industrial School of Los Angeles, where the context has been difficult after the pandemic: “also, like all public high schools, most of the students we have are vulnerable boys, who are exposed to crime and who come from families with difficulties. So we not only train technically, but also value-wise”, explains Jara.
For Espinoza, so far in the program has given him “several tips that will contribute to an improvement in our daily work, in terms of learning and treatment.” While, for Jara, what they are currently learning about neuroscience “has helped me a lot, because I am new to the area of education. I had always worked in mining before,” she adds.
local experiences
Directors and teachers from establishments in the area also participate in the space. It is the case of Vladimir Loyola, who is head of UTP Liceo Juan Antonio Ríos de Talcahuano. For him, this program has been perfect: “The module we are doing now, curriculum, is directly related to our Educational Improvement Project, it gives us a north,” he explains.
Although getting up every Saturday to study is hard on a personal and family level, “my job as a manager is to motivate our entire team to come. We even have a WhatsApp group and there I am always cheering. It has served us to create more bonds as colleagues and to improve the learning of our students”, he details.
While Daniel Guzman, Ricardo Vergara and Paula Soto are part of CEAT Mauricio Hochschild of San Pedro de la Paz. In the case of Guzmán and Vergara, they are from the engineering area, so the postgraduate degree has helped them a lot to understand how adolescents learn and see the world, “in order to know what stimuli to give them,” explains Guzmán. All three speak of a collaborative environment with freedom for teaching, so they are open to knowing how to continue innovating.
In the case of Soto, she is a differential educator and it has been a challenge to work in this high school, because she only had the School Integration Program (PIE) for 4 years, for which she has managed to form very good classroom teams in some spaces and it has found more resistance in others. She adds that she really likes the postgraduate classes “because they have given space to dialogue between different disciplines and establishments and she considers the contributions of those of us who are here,” she points out.
Not only learn, also investigate
This postgraduate not only refers to providing education, increasing teaching professionalism in secondary technical-professional education (EMTP), but is also part of an investigation. As Dr. Castro Hidalgo explains, “the strategy goes two ways. First, increase the teaching capacity of teachers; and second, to achieve a greater integration of teachers from the general plan and specialties to achieve better rates of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship in EMTP students”, he adds.
Among the disciplines that converge in this program are neurosciences, psychology, sociology and epistemology, in order to know “the biological evolution of our central nervous system, its current structure and its potential for interaction with the environment”, Explain. All this, in order for teachers to learn how we learn, giving scientific support to the way in which pedagogy is exercised.
The full name of the program is “Pedagogy for Professional Technical Education teachers, didactic decisions based on scientific consilience for higher level managers, teachers, professionals and technicians who work in Professional Technical Secondary Education” and has been financed thanks to the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness (FIC) of the Biobío Regional Government. Find more information at: educacionyconsilienciacientifica.cl
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