Fundamentos teóricos de la Educación Universitaria, sus artífices e incidencias en el currículo promovido

Recibido 21 de agosto de 2008 • Aceptado 29 de abril de 2009 • Corregido 23 de junio de 2009   Es posible pensar que al igual que la política nutre el currículo, la pedagogía, en su arte práctica, supone ser su abono para el cultivo de aprendizajes en la vida. Esto significa que el docente con formación pedagógica puede estar en capacidad de transformar su conocimiento disciplinar en un aprendizaje de conocimiento entendible, práctico y con sentido, por cuanto recurre a la pedagogía como el instrumento que le facilita viabilizar la política curricular en aras de convertir el proceso educativo en uno de calidad. Asimismo, se considera que gran parte de la profesionalización docente podría radicar en la continuidad de la formación del profesorado o formación permanente, cuyo resultado es el desarrollo profesional del profesorado y, consecuentemente, del alumnado, para que, de este proceso, se geste, “conocimiento al servicio de la vida, del elevamiento de la calidad de vida” (Flores, 1994, p. XXV), es decir, aprendizajes significativos producto de modelos de enseñanza acordes con lo que dicta y busca la propuesta curricular promovida.

Building the Commercial Education Professional Competency Profile

This paper provides a complete description of the Commercial Education Professional Competency Profile that resulted from the curricular diagnosis of the Licenciatura en Educación Comercial , at the Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica.  The methodological strategy used relies on the principles of research on education. Upon expert validation, written questionnaires were applied to first-year students, students of the licenciatura, practicing professionals and employers. The objective was to describe a particular education situation. Data was analyzed according to two categories: intentions/principles and scope/development. The findings resulted in the characteristics of the Commercial Education professionals, i.e. characteristics related to the discipline, characteristics related to the administrative management of teaching, specific and general characteristics of education and pedagogy, and characteristics associated to human development. Based on those criteria, on the curricular requirements of the information sources and on the curricular perspectives of the Academic Unit, ideas were put into practice to build the competency profile. The ideas proposed comprise the curricular fundamentals of the educational project on which the profile is set out, which include the subject of the study program, the global competency or training goal, the generic competencies as cross-cutting approaches, as well as the –pedagogical and disciplinary− specific competencies. The specific competencies of the discipline are focused on four competency areas: document production, organizational support, technological resources and information management.(1) Translator’s Note: One-year post-Bachelor study program in Commercial Education.

Keys on the Formation and Human Development in Pedagogy

This paper is based on the experiences of the author, who has worked in the various levels of the Venezuelan educational system. This has been a very important platform to understand the ideas of education and human development within the Venezuelan institutionality in the educational field. The idea of education that we have, as teachers, should be rethought in order to consider the personal stories of those who share with us their time, interests and willingness: children, young people or adults, all with particular identities, differences and coincidences. The teachers, the schools and the State cannot consider an education for someone they do not know. In this sense, we provide some reflections resulting from our ethnographic work, based on the school life, interviews, class analysis, observations, and stories, among others. Our thoughts are classified as formation, hope, dialogue, attitude, and school life.