“Believing in young people is seeing in them, in addition to enthusiasm, capacity; in addition to youth, purity, heroism, character, will, love for the homeland, faith in the homeland, love for the Revolution, faith in the Revolution, self-confidence ”.
With these words, the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz, expresses his full confidence in today's youth, as faithful relays of workers from all spheres of life. Society has given these young people countless opportunities to achieve a professional qualification, according to social needs, among which is the task of being a teacher, due to the high demand that it has in current Cuban education.
One way to achieve increasingly superior results in their training is undoubtedly constituted by the systematic orientation towards the future pedagogical profession, as different generations of Cuban educators have done, from previous times, in search of the training of the youngest relay.
Professional orientation in Cuba has been studied from colonial times (1511-1899) to the present, by various researchers on this subject. Hence, it has manifested different trends in its development, which have established its approaches, in the early years of the 20th century, in two fundamental aspects: the selection of the profession and professional motivation.
In accordance with this, in the bibliography it is possible to find a wide variety of works developed by various authors on this subject, who have defined it in different ways, with marked interest for the teaching-educational sphere of Technical and Professional Education, in search of to meet the needs of the teaching force for their institutions.
Achieving teaching coverage in the subsystem of Professional Technical Education is an urgent need, which can only be achieved if all levels of management show the maximum of their potential in the work of professional orientation towards the study of pedagogical careers by these young people..
The need for a conception of professional guidance, which transcends the information systems and encourages the participation of the current subject, in a conscious and interactive way, complemented with specific actions, developed by all the components of its pedagogical group, will contribute to achieving stability in the Pedagogical careers of students who enter the study at the higher level.
It has been found that not all students who undertake the study of pedagogical careers, mainly in technical specialties, have gone through the different processes established in previous levels to strengthen their motivation and interest in teaching.
This brings with it the demotivation for the studies and the desertion as soon as the school year begins. This statement is evident in the electrical and mechanical specialties, in which mostly those who enroll in the University of Pedagogical Sciences of the Pinero territory, do so with the idea of graduating, but not to work as professors in their respective specialties.
Coupled with this, the diverse origin of the teachers who have faced the preparation of these young people has also influenced, as part of the universalization process, mainly at the university headquarters, since dissimilar specialists have been needed to take on teaching in the university. training of future professionals.
With their willingness to carry out the task without having acquired a pedagogical training, the strong assumption of the pedagogical professional orientation that students demand has been limited. Hence, the meetings of their subjects lack, to a certain extent, guiding actions.
This requires highly qualified teaching staff, trained and trained in educational and instructive work, who in turn assume guidance to youth and adults throughout their training stage as professionals, based on their own experiences in the work. pedagogical.
In order to achieve this systematic preparation, the domain and application that teachers make of the knowledge and skills related to the terms orientation, professional orientation and pedagogical professional orientation plays a relevant role, depending on the understanding of the need for their application. throughout the students' performance, from the beginning to the end of their higher studies.
And what happens during the pre-entry stage to higher education?
The accumulated pedagogical experience says of this process, that the highest numbers of "motivated" by the work of the teacher in primary education are reached and it is decreasing as the students go through higher levels of education. This reality closely corresponds to the Martian precept that states "… every student who progresses is a teacher who is born."
In the transition to Basic Secondary, although the training of the pedagogical motivation of the students is given continuity, and the aspiration of the adolescents is not the same and the number of applicants becomes smaller.
Hence, a more arduous work must be directed to rescue the motivation towards the educational profession, during the transit through the subsequent levels, as well as and the strengthening of the guiding actions already within the pedagogical career itself at the university.
Technical and Professional Education, where each polytechnic institution pays for Higher Education with students who have opted for a pedagogical career according to technical specialties, becomes their main source of income. In these centers, the actions of pedagogical professional guidance designed based on the indications of a territorial program are developed, directed by the members of said commissions, with a strategy that responds to the need to enter the higher level future professionals.
If you do not take into account that once students have entered the selected pedagogical career and do not continue to provide all that help, cooperation, advice and influence as a process, you run the risk of losing at least part of that continuous work and even more so to a part of those who entered the higher level.
The authors have come to such an assertion, due to their experience in caring for young people from careers in the agricultural specialties, Mechanization, Agricultural Mechanization, Economy and Construction, during the last courses at the institution.
Having participated in numerous control visits to classes, with the intention of corroborating the progress of the career guidance strategy; the development of the Joint Methodological Trainings by ETP centers; control visits to the polytechnics of the territory, exchanges with their teachers and collecting the criteria of the students in training, leads him to raise the need to implement a more coherent system of actions in which all teachers who work with students, regardless of their work origin.
The universalization process has brought with it the provision of the service of a considerable number of professors from all disciplines, in order to be able to continue the training of future teachers, located in the corresponding university headquarters.
It is a necessity that they be trained in the pedagogical professional orientation strategy, as part of the established director program, which some direct teachers of the institution fulfill, but not by teachers who come from other organizations and do not have this weapon or the abilities for their development, being limited the guiding function on the students in formation.
Many have been researchers who have dabbled in the subject of career guidance. Among them, M. Gómez (1994) stands out, when projecting it on the basis of the conception of education of the professional orientation of the personality as content of education.
JL Del Pino (1998), who has considered it as a relationship of help to the student on the basis of the problematizing nature of the teaching-educational process to facilitate the conformation of their professional identity.
Z. Matos (2003), has introduced the need to offer the student ways, methods, procedures and techniques to search and find a suitable place within the profession system.
These contributions highlight the relationship of help that should be provided to their students during the teaching-educational process, from providing them with the appropriate ways and methods to achieve the formation of their personality.
It is remarkable the fact that a group of authors coincide in stating that professional orientation is a helping relationship established with students for the selection of their future career; however others defend the fact that it is an activity within pedagogical practice. Consequently, with both assessments, it is notable that students who have already selected their career in technical specialties, suffer from this help, which can only be settled with pedagogical activity and the correct guidance of their teachers.
Other authors define professional orientation as a process of personality education and a group of them defend it as a function aimed at helping to choose a certain occupational sphere or professional training. As can be seen, its authors frame the professional orientation with certain limits until the choice of the career in question and aimed at developing aspects in the personal order, without hardly directing the students towards the occupational profile of their specialty and how to face the work practice once they have graduated from higher education.
Daily practice has shown that every person, at any time in their life, needs to be oriented to the fulfillment of any task and the achievement of the objectives that are proposed; hence the success to achieve them. Extrapolating this idea to the school level, higher level students require continuity and consistency in that sense, which should not end with the choice of a university career in previous grades.
The fulfillment of the control functions, inherent to the content of the authors' work, has also allowed him to appreciate that not all the teaching staff in charge of transmitting knowledge to students comply, through their classes, with the provisions of the Program Director of Pedagogical Professional Guidance, considering by many of them that if the student is already in a university career, "it is assumed" that they have their defined vocation and have received the corresponding guidance to perform during the career, without paying attention to what which led to their choice.
In reality, not every student who arrives at a pedagogical career, coming from a polytechnic institute, does so with the firm decision of being a future teacher or professor, in many cases that "vocation" develops to the same extent that the training stage in the pedagogical career passes, from the first year of study. The degree of development depends directly on the orientation, organized and planned actions that its group of teachers carry out through their classes.
To establish the necessary links between what various authors refer to the definition of the term orientation, the analysis of several of them is proposed, in order to achieve a common approach to its usefulness, in the process of professional pedagogical orientation.
For O. Lessire and J. González, orientation has been defined as an activity that is developed in order to support the individual to analyze their needs, diagnose their possibilities, study the perspective that they envision to build their life project; and, accompany her in the execution of a program for her development, with the intention of guaranteeing her adaptation to the historical and cultural context in which she has to function.
This definition makes it clear that orientation constitutes support, so the student cannot be left alone in his development towards the future. It is necessary to guide him throughout his life project, that for the researcher's effects, this orientation is intentional and does not reach its limit until the completion of his studies.
For his part, Del Pino, JL (1995) has approached guidance as “the scientific activity of defining and implementing how to effectively help someone at a given time and space to facilitate the highest level of personal growth possible, according to the specific stage development in which they are and their specific social and personal situation in the educational orientation, and that someone is the student and the space is the school environment ”.
It is clear in both authors the intention to support the individual in the school environment, thereby contributing to the growth of their personality in an unlimited way, starting from the diagnosis of their needs and even from the perspectives when projecting their future life, but they do not bring them closer to how to proceed towards the future profession.
Based on the need to solve the problems that young people mainly face when selecting their future profession, various authors have defined professional orientation in the following ways: “It refers to activities aimed at helping people of all ages. ages, in all moments of their life, to make a decision about education, training and profession and to manage their professional career ”.
Attending to the purposes of professional guidance, other authors defend the premise of its usefulness for the development of professional identity, self-determination and preparation for the selection of the future profession.
Professional guidance "means the help given to an individual to solve problems related to the choice of a profession and professional progress, taking into account the characteristics of the person concerned and the relationship between these and the possibilities of the employment market."
Dr. Viviana González Maura (2004) defines professional orientation: as “a process aimed at achieving professional self-determination in the subject. This implies, therefore, the need to direct the orientation process to the development of the motivational and cognitive sphere of the subject's personality, that is, of knowledge, skills, motives and professional interests and what is very important, the development of the self-assessment of the subject and qualities of the personality, such as: independence, perseverance, flexibility; that allow a certain professional choice ”.
It is in this sense that the university student, who has already made his professional self-determination and is in full pedagogical training, needs, along with the development of his cognitive sphere, that a whole process of orientation to the development of the motivational sphere be directed in him, which The author's judgment must be planned individually and collectively; organized, directed and controlled, to be able to measure periodically and until the end of the degree, its pedagogical evolution.
The researcher Jorge L. del Pino Calderón, when referring to professional guidance in Higher Education, defines it as the helping relationship that we establish with students to facilitate the process of developing their personal identity through different techniques and integrated paths to the general educational procedure, according to the evolutionary stage and the specific situation in which it is found ”.
In this sense, the teacher's knowledge of the particularities diagnosed in their students, the study of the cumulative record, the individual and group characterization, as well as their participation in the pedagogical delivery, plays a fundamental role. The domain and application of the actions of the pedagogical strategy conceived for the group must be generalized, as it constitutes a working instrument for the planning of the classes and through them, fulfill the professional orientation tasks conceived.
In close relation to the content of the pedagogical professional orientation, which establishes the development of the affective and cognitive sphere, in addition to education and the development of the characteristics of the pedagogical profession and its exercise, it is important for the group of teachers to mastery and application of its different moments, of the psychological diagnosis of each of its students and its follow-up, in order to give them continuity to strengthen motivation and interest in the profession; all this in close connection with the family, school and society.
The pedagogical professional orientation has then been defined as “the system of political, psychological, pedagogical and social influences that aims to equip children and young people with the necessary knowledge, feelings and attitudes so that once the moment arrives, they are capable of to choose a pedagogical career with full conviction, in accordance with the demands and needs of the country and their personal interests, stay in it and act consistently once graduated ”.
From the analysis carried out on the definitions provided by various researchers, it follows that guidance as such can be applied to all people, regardless of age, and therefore includes children, youth, adults and the elderly; in the same way, this aid is intended to solve certain situations in which individuals are immersed in solving problems for the selection of a profession or job.
The availability of these orientations is unlimited, so it provides opportunities to all equally in the development of personality, through a continuous process, applicable at all times of the orientation process, where the beneficiary or beneficiaries have the necessary advice at their disposal to undertake the professional choice, freely, whose self-determination has gone through an uninterrupted process in the awareness of future work.
The level of self-determination of the subject plays a decisive role in decision-making; their self-assessment and conviction before the choice of the future profession. It is here where the problems arise in the student body, once they made the decision to join the study of a pedagogical career for which they lack motivation and professional guidance, rather than interest in the technical profession from which they come.
What possibilities do students entering pedagogical careers have, interested in graduating from a specialty, but lacking motivation for the profession, given the challenges of society to train the teaching staff that is needed in these times?
Cuban education enjoys a high national and international prestige, won by the great work undertaken since the same revolutionary triumph, in January 1959, and the Literacy Campaign developed in the country from the first moments of the triumph. Therefore, recognition of the work of Cuban educators is one of the achievements of these times. All students are aware of this, as objects and subjects of the teaching-educational process that takes place in Technical Sciences.
The National Education System and the Technical and Professional Education subsystem have well-designed training plans for the teaching staff that are needed, having all the accumulated experience, a network of educational centers equipped with the minimum necessary technology, audiovisual media and above all, with highly qualified teachers in educational work and trained to contribute to:
• The creation and application of a system of actions to raise pedagogical motivation, as part of the professional orientation strategy in which each of the teachers has an integral influence through their classes, and an effective way to achieve motivation of the students towards the pedagogical work and with it guarantee the permanence of the students in training throughout the career.
• The development of differentiated activities with the students, in correspondence with the initial diagnosis, promoting their preparation and stimulation towards the formation of professional values.
• From what is planned in the system of actions, hold talks with renowned pedagogues, based on knowing their experiences, contributions to the educational sector and level of commitment achieved in their teaching-educational work.
• The study of the biography of the main pedagogical figures of Cuba, the territory and the profession.
• Projection of teaching activities with an investigative character about the pedagogical work of the teacher.
• Exhibition of the best results of competitions, research, emulations, activities, as a compiler of memories and experiences acquired and lived.
• Discussions of pedagogical films, in which the message that their content leaves for their future teaching work is highlighted.
• Carrying out contests on elementary pedagogical knowledge and on the life and work of pedagogues.
• Make each student feel that by joining a pedagogical career they are facing the fulfillment of one of the most beautiful tasks for society and that they feel the recognition of their community for this.
• It is proposed as a possible way of solution, already proven in practice, that the political-ideological work be the common thread of the professional orientation process, in order to commit those incorporated into the ranks of technical specialties teachers with their continuity of studies, in correspondence with the needs of the territory, as well as its unconditional materialization by teachers.
• The creation of a Professional Pedagogical Information Bureau and its permanent operation at the university, in fact, can become an action that counteracts the desertion of students, for which it is necessary to provide all the necessary support to the staff that integrates it, by specialties, that in general, those who have this function, do not have the preparation to provide specialized care to those who are trained in technical careers. In this way, they will be able to receive and serve students and deepen the pedagogical professional orientation that they need in correspondence with their occupational profile.
• Keeping the website of the pedagogical institution updated is a very effective way for all students and interested staff to have a level of updating of the performance of the teaching staff of Technical and Professional Education in the territory. At present, the data or elements that make it up for said subsystem do not provide enough for the professional guidance required.
Consequently with this, the systematicity of maintaining the orientation of the young people through the career is lost and in many cases the students are disconnected and preventive treatment has not been given.
Daily practice shows that persuasive work is necessary, convincing the arriving students, so that while their professors hold the meetings for the classes, they guide them professionally, with the aim of guaranteeing the relief in those specialties.
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