¡La ciencia social no es testigo histórica, hoy, más que nunca, debe ser actora política!

En el III Congreso Nacional de Sociología, en 1987, señalé que “aún no se había hecho una evaluación global de las orientaciones y resultados de la enseñanza de las ciencias sociales”, y que era “un reto urgente de reflexionar”. Creo que esa premisa sigue siendo válida aún hoy, aunque también debemos reconocer que en los últimos 15 años ha habido un incremento extraordinario de la producción investigativa de las diferentes ramas de las ciencias sociales.

La enseñanza tradicional de las ciencias versus las nuevas tendencias educativas

To think of an educational proposal that teaches how to learn, it is necessary to consider a change not only educationally but also political, social, economical, ecological, cultural, among others, to enable an understanding of reality and in which there can be a construction of knowledge and a crucial role of sciences. But we must not forget that the development of science has been marked by the so-called positivistic science that it is characterized by interpreting phenomena and how this function through theories and laws, where the context and humans have a very poor leading role, if any, to which one can call scientism, which has allowed development even above human needs. However, since the 90s, there is a resurgence of progressive humanism in the educational fields, where there is a search of a revaluation of what it is considered human, which involves a series of epistemological and methodological changes that drives us towards new ways of working. This calls us to reflect on extreme choices to build knowledge, beyond the traditional teaching of the sciences, which are comprehensive, systematic, and flexible and rooted in a humanistic culture. Some models of the new trends are: directed research, discovery learning, inquiry learning and teaching of science and new technologies.