Introduction
The university in the 21st century claims the demands of a solid cultural formation as the foundation of the global understanding of the time in which one lives. The training process has been oriented towards a broad and profound vision determined by the impetuous development of science and technology in close interconnection with the different spheres of knowledge, as well as by its impact on the entire life of society. Today's university must be a key factor for scientific development; The scientific, technological and humanistic university model combines strengths that are unique attributes: a high concentration of men of science and thought, which makes the university a social institution with the capacity to generate new knowledge and skills to understand technological developments,and with the ability to spread, socialize such knowledge.
The issue of university extension has been addressed interchangeably, but there are no references to research from the perspective of student leadership in the development of this process and the training of the student so that they can perform in this field.
The University of Pinar del Río in recent years has stood out, at high levels, for its results achieved in its entirety and particularly in the field of university extension, which stands out for the work being carried out to enhance the extension dimension of the educational projects. This center works hard to graduate a qualified and comprehensive professional of great use to society.
Despite the effort, there are still difficulties that restrict, somewhat, the protagonism of the students in their actions, as well as in their comprehensive training. Starting from the limitations presented by the Agricultural Engineers to act as promoters in the field of agricultural extension and the main ways or ways that the institution has to promote the development of these processes; We propose a methodology for the extension training of the Agricultural Engineer at the University of Pinar del Río.
Development
1. Theoretical Referents of the University Extension.
In the times in which we live, the universities, in addition to fulfilling their social mandate as a cultural institution, have the purpose of ensuring the quality of the integral formation of the professional's personality, through the university substantive processes (teaching, research and extension).
In this sense, the extensionist component becomes, from their practice, the integrating and dynamic element that facilitates the continuous cultural flow between the university and society that mutually enriches them. It also contributes to the comprehensive training of professionals with a humanistic social approach; aspiration of Cuban Higher Education.
In order to analyze the process of university extension, it is necessary to be very clear about the scope of the concept of culture, a problem related to extension, so we assume what Fernández said, which suggests that it is necessary to “fill the term of culture with content broader and more diversified, less elite and conservative. Jump from a static, finished conception of culture as a product, of culture as a result, to one of culture as a process, of culture as an attitude, of culture as openness, of culture as energy ”.
This broad perspective of culture places the university as a facilitator so that the community builds, develops, re-works, produces, creates and appropriates its own culture.
Once the definition of culture is clearly understood, we can continue the study of university extension as one of the substantial functions of the university, which González González defines as:
"System of interactions of the University and Society, through activity and communication, carried out inside and outside the higher education center, with the purpose of promoting culture in the university and extra-university community, to contribute to their cultural development "
This definition of university extension allows us to understand it as a process of human interaction, where its result is resized as activity and communication, in addition to illustrating the fundamental function of extension to promote culture, in order to achieve cultural development in the intra and extra-university community.
The role of extension through its own participation in cultural development to contribute to the transformation of society, of the processes that take place in the university and of the university itself, dimension it as an activity, insofar as it aims at the conscious transformation of medium.
The university extension is a manifestation of the dialectical relationship between the University and the Society, it occurs in the link, but not in every link, but the one whose purpose is the promotion of culture; that is, it is the one in which the relationship is established between culture and the elevation of the cultural level of society in general through the extension function.
Extensionist can be any of the members of the faculty, of the research groups and of the entire student body of the university, in addition to the leaders and activists who join the community projects and actions. The profile cannot be seen related to a given profession or specialty, the common thing in them is to be cultural promoters.
This confirms the scope of the university extension, which involves not only actors related to the artistic and the literary, but also encompasses a whole group of people who are interested in promoting culture, in a broad definition, including scientific knowledge., technical, humanistic; to raise the cultural level of the community.
2. The extension training of the Agricultural Engineer at the University of Pinar del Río.
The challenges of world agriculture, and in particular that of our country, in the production of food to satisfy the needs of a growing population, the need to prepare an Agricultural Engineer capable of transforming the environment in the adaptation and extension of more appropriate technologies in rural areas through their actions in the use of participatory methods and techniques, their level of communication with farmers and the technological domain for training.
Producers not only need resources, they also need knowledge, information and training and these must be transferred to the producer in the most communicative and efficient way possible, making the preparation of the future Agricultural Engineer a task that implies comprehensiveness.
According to Álvarez y Torres from the conception of forming the new generations in connection with the search for solutions to the problems of society, of the community, they consider that: “The university for society, for the community, will train progressive professionals, that they respond to the interests of their people and the best way to get to know reality is by living with it, solving its problems, as a way to be a creator, a researcher, to develop thinking and to form values and feelings ”.
From this perspective, the university extension process takes on great importance, which constitutes one of the fundamental ways for the student's formation. Its fundamental methodology is cultural promotion in a global sense, which includes the performance of the student as a subject of the promotion of the academic and investigative culture of the university. Remember that every university student can be a cultural promoter, the extension work is not limited to a specific specialty or branch of knowledge.
Likewise, the student is instructed in the knowledge accumulated by humanity and is trained as a researcher; it is also necessary to train him in the extension work. Many have been the authors who have raised the need for the integration of the three substantial processes of the university to form a comprehensive student. A good professional requires research to find solutions to identified problems, teaching to appropriate the accumulated knowledge, and extension to introduce experiences, knowledge, research results, and the solution of community problems and needs.
The training of cultural promoters is part of the substantive strategies of the Cuban University, since we are talking about culture in its broadest sense, where together with art and literature, science is also the object of the promotional process.
In a general sense, the strategy for the formation of cultural promoters in the Higher Education Center must always start from the curricular and taking its strengths, be linked, with all the possibilities it offers, the extension dimension to achieve an education in values as identification frameworks, self-reproduction and action on the medium.
It would then be responding to one of the tasks that the Revolution currently has, to prepare comprehensive university graduates, with a vocation for service; in addition to the social charge of the university as a cultural institution to promote culture, in all its breadth. The university graduate will be able, independently of the profession that he is going to exercise to promote, spread, and transmit a whole range of knowledge learned in his years of study.
Faced with this problem, it is necessary to continue working for the insertion of the extension component in the curricular areas of the careers, but in a natural, coherent way and knowing the values that it contributes to the teaching-educational process. This insertion involves contrasting the analysis of the social dimension, the character and sense of knowledge, the value and skill systems that underpin the individual and social learning process of students but also of teachers with the set of elements existing in the real teaching practices inside and outside the university walls, in short, the study of the global strategies of the culture to be built.
When it is intended to train professionals with an analytical, critical and creative mind with an interest in transforming and with the true capacity to solve problems, it is essential that the means be promoted that will allow them to obtain better technical, economic and communicative performance for the different conditions in which they will be able Act. The training of the professional in Agricultural Sciences must undoubtedly meet the existing social demands. It is necessary to achieve training capable of linking theory with work practice, so that professionals who are aware of reality and capable of transforming it through their own solutions graduate.
The determination that the subject of Rural Extensionism be taught in the universities where the degree in Agronomic Engineering is studied responds essentially to the purpose of higher education institutions to train comprehensive graduates, with a humanistic character and a general culture; that is to say, to train men and women of these times capable of transforming the realities where they take place. Specifically, through this subject, the Agronomy student is trained as an extensionist or promoter of the culture of their profession, giving them a set of elements and communication skills, participation and group work that enable them to socialize, exchange knowledge acquired efficiently. That is, it offers the student the mechanisms to use to detect threats,weaknesses, opportunities and strengths of a community, in order to achieve higher levels of production and social development.
The University of Pinar del Río has contributed to the fact that graduates of Agronomic Engineering are more comprehensive professionals, since the subject of Rural Extensionism was taught two courses ago, which has enabled these professionals in Agricultural Sciences to be better prepared in terms of developing skills in the labor component that allow them to communicate more easily, self-improve, detect problems, opportunities, weaknesses, strengths and threats in the companies that work and consequently are better prepared based on their future work performance.
The formative influences that take place during the development of the teaching process are of special importance for the formation of the integral professional to which we aspire. Each discipline and subject of the curriculum plays a specific role which must be clearly determined through a pedagogical work that provides the training strategies to be taken into account at each stage of the development of the teaching process, making it essential to approach this task scientifically so that the influences reach the student in a systematic way through the content of the subject; in class, laboratory practice, work activity, etc., in order to develop the personal qualities that we have already mentioned in students, from the first year of the degree to the last.
It is intended that each teacher be able to train in their students qualities and skills that allow them to promote the knowledge they are acquiring. In this sense, it is necessary that teachers are prepared and trained in how group work is developed, participatory techniques and communication. It is not that each teacher is a specialist in extension work, our aim is that each one considers among their educational and instructional objectives that their students develop extension skills closely related to the content of the specific subject they teach.
Another important aspect in the extension training of the student of Agricultural Engineering is the Teaching Units, which are material extensions of the development of university processes.
The teaching unit is considered as an extension of the university, for which the university teaching, research and extension processes must necessarily be developed; and which has great potential to extend the culture of the university to all areas of the community.
Undoubtedly, this interactive form of teaching in the teaching unit allows the student to be the promoter of all that knowledge that he or she has acquired, whether academic or due to the research carried out by him, which is part of the culture of his profession in the community where he works. find.
Other institutions that are closely linked to the extension training of the Agricultural Engineer are in charge of employing university graduates, where they will work as professionals in the future. These institutions are where the people who carry out agricultural extension work are found, many have completed postgraduate studies on the subject and others direct it, so they know how it is carried out in the country and in the province, which have These have been their results and the main difficulties they face in carrying out this work.
The Honorary Chair of Agronomy plays an important role in the extension training of the student of Agronomic Engineering. The objective of which is to familiarize the students of the degree, especially those of the first and second year, with the main results of the production of agriculture in the country, bringing it closer to the history of the profession, to its culture.
The elaboration and realization of educational projects and social projects would be another of the ways that contribute to the extension training of the Agricultural Engineer. Each brigade elaborates its projects that respond to a need of the intra or extra-university community.
It is a fact that the extension training of the Agricultural Engineer is of vital importance for his comprehensive training as a professional of these times. The Agricultural Engineer must be a promoter of the culture of his profession, with a marked humanistic training that allows him to communicate his technical knowledge, but also contributes to achieving a higher level of productivity and sociocultural development in the different communities where he is. Present.
3. Methodology for training the agricultural engineer as a promoter in the field of agricultural extension.
The design of a methodology and its implementation for the extension training of the Agricultural Engineer enables them to acquire techniques and develop skills to work as promoters in the field of agricultural extension, in correspondence with the theoretical foundations indicated. When structuring it, the following should be considered:
A. The difficulties presented by the extension training of Agronomic Engineering students at the University of Pinar del Río.
B. Skills to develop and techniques that an Agricultural Engineer must know to be a promoter in the field of agricultural extension.
C. Policies of higher education in the professional training of the Agricultural Engineer.
The methodology for the training of the Agricultural Engineer as a cultural promoter relates the guidelines of higher education in the professional training and the requirements that the extension training of the Agronomy student must have; Thus facilitating the addressing of theoretical foundations and their future implementation through the steps it proposes. In the implementation of the methodology, the Directorate of the Faculty of Agroforestry and the Department of Agronomy of said faculty will become relevant.
- The methodology has five essential steps: diagnosis, establishing the essential premises, selection of the alternatives, design of the planned actions and evaluation of the results achieved. The definition of the methodological actions for the implementation of the methodology establishes the order to be followed in creating a favorable climate for the development, control, evaluation and monitoring of the development of the process that allows it to check its results and determine corrective actions if necessary. Teacher training is of vital importance for implementation of the methodology, based on the ignorance of the theoretical and methodological references of university extension and agricultural extension.
Conclusions
The Agricultural Engineer must be a promoter of the culture of his profession, with a marked humanistic training that allows him to communicate his technical knowledge, but also contributes to achieving a higher level of productivity and sociocultural development in the different communities where he is. Present.
- The determination that there is a complete correspondence between the foundation of the extension training of the Agricultural Engineer and the proposed methodology for its implementation in the Agronomy degree at the University of Pinar del Río, guarantees progress in the university extension process essentially as to achieve the involvement of Agronomy students in it, acting as promoters in the field of the culture of their profession.
Bibliography
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