Intervention strategies on teachers focused on creating meaningful educational environments for mathematical abilities development

This article describes an intervention process undertaken in a training program for preschool and first grade teachers from public schools in Cali, Colombia. The objective of this process is to provide a space for teachers to reflect on pedagogical practices which allow them to generate educational processes that foster children’s understanding of mathematical knowledge in the classroom. A set of support strategies was presented for helping teachers in the design, analysis and implementation of learning environments as meaningful educational spaces. Furthermore, participants engaged in an analysis of their own intervention modalities to identify which modalities facilitate the development of mathematical abilities in children. In order to ascertain the transformations in the teachers’ learning environments, the mathematical competences and cognitive processes underlying the activities proposed in the classroom, as well as teacher intervention modalities and the types of student participation in classroom activities were examined both before and after the intervention process. Transformations in the teachers’ conceptions about the children’s abilities and their own practices in teaching mathematics in the classroom were evidenced.

Pensar pedagógicamente, de nuevo, desde el constructivismo

En el presente artículo, continúo con el titulado “Pensar pedagógicamente desde el constructivismo: de las concepciones a las prácticas pedagógicas”, publicado en la Revista de Estudios Sociales de la Universidad de los Andes (1). Allí presentaba las que son para mí las principales concepciones constructivistas y sustentaba que ellas nos permiten a los profesores de cualquier disciplina y nivel educativo cambiar nuestras concepciones tradicionales asociadas con la transmisión del conocimiento. Al hacerlo, los principios constructivistas nos permiten también renovar nuestra visión de lo que es el aprendizaje y cómo ocurre, y crear nuevas prácticas pedagógicas para un mejor aprendizaje crítico en los alumnos. Aquí discuto cómo estas concepciones no han logrado realmente penetrar nuestra práctica pedagógica a ningún nivel, desde los currículos hasta las prácticas de aula, y describo un panorama posible de verdadero uso de principios constructivistas en pedagogía.