"Ask yourself if what you are doing today brings you closer to where you want to be tomorrow"
Walt disney
In education the term project refers to the instrument that includes the intention to build something. Construction can be a palpable or evident production, for example a document that expresses guidelines for the development of institutional life or an intangible creation. The projects have arisen from the need to publicize the life of the school. These can be of different types, but this essay is focused on explaining the characteristics of the Educational Center and its importance.
Educational institutions have the need to create a document that identifies them; since each one has its history, mission, vision and principles. For this reason, it became necessary for all these aspects to be presented in a document called the Educational Project of the Center.
The PEC is a tool to reduce the margins of uncertainty that characterize the life of schools, constantly challenged by multiple demands and requirements, in which different subjects participate, and live, with diverse roles and functions. Faced with this complexity, it arises as a need but also as a response to that need. It is a pedagogical document prepared by the entire Educational Community, which lists and defines the characteristics of the center, formulates the objectives to be achieved and expresses the organizational and functional structure of the educational center. In this sense, Antúnez (1987) states that it is “An instrument for management, consistent with the school context, that lists and defines the identity notes of the center,formulates the objectives that the organizational structure of the institution intends and expresses ”. This means that it is a tool that serves to organize or capture the life of the school. In it, everything related to the center, its history, location, mission, vision, principles, values and organizational structure of the staff is presented in detail.
Montero (1996) defines it as «Common pattern of actions that, designed by an educational team, is established in harmony and adjustment with the context analysis of the Center; ensures consistency with the rest of the planning elements of the Educational Project; establishes specific guidelines for various fields (objectives, content, methodology, evaluation…); It includes organizational, orientation, school proposals, teacher training and evaluation of their own design; adopts, as referents, the administrative requirements; defines the identity of the center; it is aimed at equalizing the possibilities of educational success of the students; and ultimately contributes to their future personal and social development ». In other words, it is produced by a team,It is adapted to the context and must be interrelated with a series of elements that are essential for the organization of the educational center.
As stated in the Operational Manual of a public educational center (page 22), “It constitutes a planning and management tool that defines the vision, mission of the educational center, as well as the values and purposes that guide its operation and institutional development. With the PEC, each school builds its own innovation model, taking into account the specific characteristics of the community in which it is located and according to the Level, Cycle or Modality to which it refers. ” This means that each educational center has a different project, because each one belongs to a different environment and has different needs. For this reason, each school must prepare it taking into account its location and the availability of available resources.
In addition, it can be said that it is the planning instrument that lists and defines the identity notes of the Center, establishes the frame of reference in a globalized way and the educational approaches in a general way that define and distinguish one center from another, express the educational purposes that it wishes to achieve, adjusts the established curriculum in global proposals for didactic intervention, appropriate to its specific context, and expresses the organizational structure of the Center. The purpose of this is to provide schools with coherence and their own personality. This type of project defines the aims of the Educational Community in terms of the type of person that they want to train, that is, the values, principles of identity, guidelines of conduct that they want to achieve. It contains general educational approaches.
The content of this type of project is focused on the identity principle of the institution. All sectors of the Educational Community participate in its preparation and must be approved by the School Council of the Center. With this, the educational approach of the Center is specified, systematized and justified in a document. This is intended to show what is implicitly done in the institution.
This has various characteristics, which can be summarized as follows:
- It is unique, proper and particular to each Center. It includes aspects of training, coexistence, organization, government… It must be susceptible to modifications according to the process that is carried out day by day. It must start from the analysis of reality and function as an instrument for improvement of the Center. It must have an interrelation between the objectives with the educational models to follow and the organization and management. Imply a formal commitment of the different sectors of the Educational Community in its exercise and development. Respond to the needs and interests of the Center of global and real way.
In other words, it is constituted above all by the set of principles that, in addition to constituting the community as such, support the decisions that are adopted in the set of plans and projects. The most appropriate principles to configure the educational project of a center are those that can contribute to solving the problem par excellence of all education.
According to Coll (1989) "The Center's Educational Project includes aspects such as priority and basic objectives, forms of organization and coordination, organization charts, operating rules." This means that it is a document of great importance for any educational institution because it allows setting priorities. Furthermore, when defining the institutional objectives, it concentrates the actions around an axis that gathers the individual efforts and harmonizes the teaching task with the rest of the institutional group. It is the unique, specific and specific production of each institution, elaborated by all its members. In other words, they are essential because with these it is like knowing the life or the heart of the school. Although Pérez (2006) affirms “It is not surprising that there are those, based on the harsh reality of everyday experience,ask yourself about the real importance of the Educational Project and answer that it is not an essential framework, since there are many centers that do not have it written and for that reason they do not work any worse ”. However, by having this type of document, schools are more identified and organized.
In this sense, Ainscow et all, (2001: 55) state that “The research carried out so far shows that school success is associated with a feeling of identity and participation among students, teachers, parents and the community. in its broadest sense. " That is why, for its elaboration, not only the management of the center, but the entire educational community must be taken into account.
In short, the operation of a center has as a general framework the Educational Project of the Center, which is its identity and which answers the questions of: Where are we? Which is the analysis of the context; About us? which refers to the principles of identity; What do we want? In other words, the general objectives to be achieved and how are we going to organize ourselves to achieve it? This refers to the organizational chart where the functions of each member of the educational community are presented.
It should be noted that they are of vital importance for the better functioning of educational institutions; since they help to better understand everything that the educational center encompasses. For this reason, they should be assumed as a useful tool of the center, not in a way imposed by MINERD or the Educational Districts. This must be a document that facilitates the operation of educational centers and therefore each member of the educational community must know it and participate in its preparation. In addition, it must be constantly modified in order to improve the quality of the center and therefore those of all those involved in it.
Download the original file
