The effect of the process of "economic globalization" constitutes today one of the decisive characteristics of the time that corresponds to us to live that will set the standard in the future of the 21st century.
Reflecting on our present results in the consideration of some «signs of our times» outlined by a constant technological innovation coupled with the universalization of a production that is advancing at a dizzying pace, the integration of large financial centers, the growing appearance of early retirements, the rejection in the labor market of important segments of the population, the surprising increase in emigration of people from poor countries who are heading towards the more developed ones; the amazing power of large multinational corporations that move from one continent to another as we do for our home.
It is then easy to understand "the profound revolution that the labor market has undergone" that now appears with new needs and consequently with innovative professional requirements.
And it is that we already live in a "post-industrial" society characterized by a strong emphasis on information services worldwide that faces the imperative of meeting new needs by training equally new professions.
According to the latest forecasts made by experts, less than a third of the total population will be sufficient to produce the agricultural and industrial goods that will be required to live, the rest will have to be professionals dedicated to developing or selling information or services.
From this brief reflection we can outline the panorama that is presented to us; An interesting perspective characterized by constant and great risks in terms of training. Who are the educators of these generations who are facing a highly qualified and competitive world of work? What characteristics and qualities should be assumed by education professionals? today? Or is it possible to continue being educated with traditional models, products of social, economic and human requirements of the past?
Answering these questions is our job, all of us, who have made education more than a profession, a lifestyle. It is our turn, this is precisely the moment in which we must choose a renewed and innovative update that provides the weapons to effectively face this exciting moment in history.
Thus, rooted in the face of these perspectives, "The Profile of the Learning Manager" appears. Its skillfully designed content responds to the three main aspects to which the role of the new educator will essentially have to focus:
- Technology and the sense of the media in teaching and learning. Design of Teaching Work. Teaching to Learn. Collaborative Work and Effective Management of a Group. Strategies that support Collaborative work. Creativity. Assessment of learning. Values. The Teacher as Advisor-Tutor. Student Development. Assertiveness.
A teaching according to the new demands, a teaching design based on the "construction" of significant learning, new didactic strategies focused on the participatory resolution of problems, projects and cases, social values to be promoted, requirements of the new teaching role, alternatives to develop critical thinking or to reach metacognition or to develop creativity.
1.1 A new profile for the teacher
The cultural progress of a society can be established in terms of universality, and one of the indicators with which it can be determined is manifested in the professions that emerge from its cultural, economic and social structure, since knowledge is "improvement."
The professions are, on the other hand, the most determining factor of personal identity - of what each one wants to 'be', and of what each one 'is' - and also of the national identity, whose ideal has been formed around the progress of knowledge.
Professions involve scientific, technical and, in a way, ethical improvement, especially those that are constituted as an end in itself, as in the case of teaching.
In this sense, the dynamism of knowledge demands educational programs with different characteristics: more oriented to learning processes than to content; a greater emphasis on information gathering and analysis skills, on research and problem solving, on planning and organizing activities, on communication, teamwork, and the use and management of technologies.
The learning environment tends to transcend the borders of school sites, students work and participate outside the classroom, closer to reality and to workplaces. The role of the teacher is transformed, expands her field of action and an ideal is outlined with specific skills, roles and attitudes.
Abilities:
Planning: Identify the great paths to follow: learning outcomes, objectives, institutional policies, scope, strategies, resources.
Design: Design objectives, goals. Identify themes, design strategies considering different learning styles; select resources, dose. The teacher, as a teaching professional, constitutes himself as "designer and manager" of the educational system.
He acts not as its owner, but as a connoisseur of the essential elements that constitute it.
His work is based on the "design" of his own activity and is complemented by research tasks during the implementation of his educational project.
Facilitate: The teacher, as a facilitator, has the ideal of getting the student to build their own knowledge, that is, to carry out meaningful learning.
This is a teaching professional, whose work is mainly focused on promoting the intellectual work of the student acting as a "mediator", and whose influence on the learning process is justified from the moment in which it makes the execution of A homework.
Analyze: The facilitator must know the context in which his educational activity is developed by analyzing all its elements and possess a critical sense.
Reflect: You must carry out activities of reflection, analysis and synthesis of your own professional practice, in order to master those tools that allow the student to carry out meaningful learning, with the methodologies most in line with the reality of their environment.
Promote alternatives: You must promote alternatives for the future in a society that is in constant change and that generates contradictions. It must train and inform students, in the search for critical and autonomous thinking.
Balance: It has to combine and balance between teaching, the comprehensive training of its students and diversity. It must respect the personal essence of each student and ideological pluralism.
Evaluate: You must design activities that allow students to show the acquired knowledge, as well as the skills, attitudes and values that they can develop.
The teacher must also use the information derived from the evaluation "to make important curricular decisions, rearrange the class, highlight or present topics, or change the pace of instruction."
Updating: Professionalizing the teaching practice supposes the figure of a teacher who becomes an expert in the exercise of his daily work; it is not "formed" by trial and error, but it dominates "knowing" and "knowing how" It must be aware of the need for continuous updating.
Roles
Member of the educational community:
- He participates in the governing bodies, academies, committees, and in the technical-pedagogical ones. He collaborates in the elaboration of the educational project and in the curricular design of the institution. He collaborates with the direction and with the teaching staff in the design and contribution of educational policies Organizes extracurricular activities for students.
Pedagogical technician:
- It adapts the curricular design of the institution to the peculiar conditions of its class. It uses the methods and technology that best adjust to the maturity of its students and the learning processes. It selects and uses the most appropriate texts and teaching material.
Facilitator:
- It adapts the material to the knowledge and competences of the students. It evaluates in an individual and varied way. It provides work techniques and encourages the acquisition of intellectual habits. It trains professional activities It focuses its activity on the student It seeks meaningful learning It promotes teamwork It promotes interaction and creativity It designs considering the different learning styles of its students It develops skills that promote critical thinking. Respect the individuality of the students and consider the fact of learning collaborative.
Educator:
- It trains students in the respect of fundamental rights and freedoms as well as in the exercise of tolerance and freedom within the democratic principles of coexistence. It prepares them to actively participate in social and cultural life. respect, for peace, cooperation and solidarity between peoples.
Attitudes:
Of respect.
Realistic.
Innovative.
Of social commitment.
Of critical sense
Of permanent improvement.
Creative.
Collaborative.
Thoughtful.
Of constant learning.
Information and telecommunications market:
Characterized by constant innovations and with the power of the Internet that exerts its universal influence in all areas of society, from personal to work and training.
Environment market:
With products that are increasingly in demand that unfold the possibility of environmentally friendly development: agricultural engineering, alternative energy, decontamination technicians.
Transport market:
Increasingly in demand in developed countries and in need of constant infrastructure improvement.
Market linked to demographics:
It refers to the design of all kinds of products and services for the older population segments, which are constantly increasing in developed countries.
Designing an educational model that effectively responds to the need to train professionals according to these new realities derives from the analysis of Learning Theories that support the exchange of cognitive structures through the "construction" of interactive and dynamic experiences.
In this section we will present a general overview of the foundations of the Learning Theories that underpin the model and that must be considered as a platform for the design of any educational model that aspires to be "up to date" with this new perspective of a universal nature.
2.1 The Learning Theory with a «Constructivist» approach
The fundamental approach from which this theory is based supports the idea that the individual "builds" his learning through "interaction" with the environment. Thus, it emphasizes the binomial «inheritance - environment».
This interactionism with the world around him gives rise to the fact that his knowledge, far from constituting a copy of reality, consists of a personally constructed "construction".
This means that learning is not a simple matter of transmission, internalization and accumulation of knowledge, but "an active process" on the part of the student who assembles, extends, restores and interprets, and therefore "builds" knowledge based on their experience. and integrating it with the information you receive.
An “effective learning” requires the active operationalization of the students, working around information that has to be learned through review, reflection, experimentation, manipulation….
Thus «Constructivism» perceives learning as a personal activity framed in functional, meaningful and authentic contexts:
For more information on constructivism and its precursors you can visit the following link:
Constructivism
Teachers contribute to the «construction» of the student but they do not provide the information explicitly since it is the student who must elaborate it.
In this process, the teacher transfers his role to the student who assumes the fundamental role in his own training process.
It is he himself who becomes responsible for his own learning, who, through his participation and collaboration with his peers, will automate new and useful intellectual structures that will lead him to perform adequately not only in his immediate social environment but in his future. professional, now it is he who through tasks of reflection, analysis, research, will have to achieve the transfer of the theoretical to practical areas, located in real contexts.
This is the new role of the student, an essential role for their own training, a role that is impossible to give up and that will provide an infinite number of significant tools that will have to be tested in the future of their own personal future.
2.2 Cognoscitivism as support for the Constructivist Theory
Cognitive Theories started parallel to Behaviorism, developing in it two very important basic aspects:
- The Cognoscitivism of Edward Chace Tolman (USA) The Gestaltist Tendencies developed by the German psychologists Wertheimer, Kohler, Koffka and Lewin.
Information sources relate their beginnings as a reaction to Watson's theories, arguing that individuals act "not only in response to stimuli," as Behaviorism puts it, but also "on the basis of beliefs, conditions, attitudes, and desire to achieve goals.".
The idea that people learn concepts, signs, maps, programs, courses of action, and all those "mental tools" that help us achieve desired goals, has been highlighted by "Gestalt theorists". Cognitive Psychologists, for their part, are concerned with studying the way in which these "mental tools or structures" are used to access and interpret reality.
Thus «Cognoscitivism» elaborates from the perceptual structures proposed by Gestalt, a psychological theory whose foundations determine that «learning» constitutes the synthesis of the form and content received by perceptions, which act in a relative and personal way in each individual, and which in turn are influenced by their individual backgrounds, attitudes and motivations.
For Cognitive Theory, "Every person acts according to their level of development and knowledge, and intentionally will do the best they can and know."
This level of development alludes to his "Cognitive Structures" and this means referring to organized and useful mental representations that serve as the foundation for achieving increasingly complex learning that leads to self-learning and metacognition.
Its relatively permanent character works as a scheme to filter, code, categorize, organize, and evaluate new information by relating it to relevant experiences.
Its utility is justified to the extent that while we receive the new acquis, we simultaneously organize it into units with a certain ordering that we call "structure".
And these "new structures" are, in turn, capable of organizing existing information:
These structures have been recognized by psychologists for some time.
Piaget (1955) calls them "schemas"
Bandura (1978) "self-systems"
Kelley (1955) "personal constructs"
Miller, Pribam, and Galanter (1960) "plans".
Some practical applications of Cognitive Theory can be seen in programs for the development of mental abilities - basic thought processes, intellectual abilities, schematics and concept maps… which, once automated, constitute the basis for self-learning, self-control and metacognition.
If it were possible to prepare a list with the typical behaviors of a teacher trained under the supervision of Constructivism and Cognoscitivism, it would be feasible to start it with:
- Stimulation and acceptance of the autonomy and initiative of the students. Use of raw data and primary sources as well as manipulative, interactive and physical materials. Use of cognitive tasks that refer terms to: «classify,» «analyze,» «predict,» and "create," Flexibility of the teaching design, giving the students' interests the opportunity to guide the course of the sessions, determine the strategies of and alter the content. They stimulate the students to dialogue with both teachers and peers. They stimulate the curiosity of the students with open and deep questions. They allow students to learn from their own mistakes. • They prefer collaborative work in small groups to the individual. They give students time to build hypotheses and test them.They guide the students' work without providing absolute answers to their inquiries.
The list may seem endless, however, the importance that concerns us here is to emphasize that while in "Constructivism" it is about creating an opportune environment to process and thereby construct information "actively and personally", Cognoscitivists emphasize the use of mental structures or symbols to support these constructions, constituting them in turn into new and complex intellectual tools that give meaning to what has been learned.
2.3 Behaviorism and its influence on education.
It would be unfair to conclude the presentation of the Learning Theories that support the new teaching work without mentioning Behaviorism, a theory that despite being constantly criticized is still valid in our culture and apparently will still remain for a long time.
Its beginnings go back to the beginning of the 20th century, from the research carried out by John B. Watson, Skinner, Thorndike, through Mc Dougall and Tolman in the second and third decades of the century, to a generation of
recognized current behavioral thinkers.
Its foundations tell us about learning as a product of a "stimulus-response" relationship, which although it does not fit fully into the new educational paradigms leaves to our discretion a range of practices that are quite useful.
His most important legacy consists in his scientific contributions on human behavior, in his efforts to solve problems related to human behavior, which although they cannot be totally solved by means of "reward - punishment" teaches us that the use of reinforcements can strengthen Appropriate behaviors, and their disuse weaken unwanted ones.
Ratings, rewards, and punishments are also contributions to this theory. Memory skills that involve primary levels of understanding can be effectively learned through behavioral practices.
Many are the critics who point against Behaviorism judging its simplistic conception of man, however we cannot forget that this body of knowledge served as the basis for the consolidation of current learning theories and that its legacy still prevails among us.
Supported in the material "The professionalization of teaching work"
June 19, 2002
