Pedagogical Trips as a Device for the Teacher Training Path
Viajes pedagógicos como dispositivo del trayecto de la formación docente
Karina Beatriz Puente*
María Verónica Aguirre*
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Introduction
In the contemporary educational context,
which is characterized by being dynamic and changing, and by being influenced
by various factors that shape the way of teaching, learning and conceiving
education, the need to train teachers capable of facing the complex challenges
of the 21st century becomes a challenge from the curricular management in the
field of teaching practices. The planning of meaningful and relevant devices
emerges in a pedagogical-didactic engineering that offers the opportunity to
broaden academic horizons by inviting students in training at the Faculty of
Education of the Catholic University of Salta to immerse themselves in multiple
cultural, social and educational realities. The pedagogical trips are one of
the relevant devices from an integral approach that promotes a holistic vision
of teacher training, in which knowledge is constructed from interaction with
the environment and from critical reflection on the experiences lived in the
diverse geo-educational contexts as action in territories.
Throughout the training process in the field of practice, students have the
opportunity to learn about and experience the particularities of various
regions of our country and neighboring countries, which allows them not only to
learn about different geographical contexts, but also to understand the social
and cultural dynamics that run through them. In these experiences, the
pedagogical trips provide multiple opportunities for analysis that reveal the
importance of the process of reflection, reasoned criticism and planning of
teaching proposals that are situated and respectful of the identity and
idiosyncrasies of each socio-cultural and educational scenario.
The value of the journey through each
experience has led University Teacher Training Colleges for Primary Education
and Early Childhood Education, as part of their training project in the field
of practice, to institutionalize the Pedagogical Journeys as one of the
substantial training sections.
Throughout the four years of the degree
course, the students are immersed in the experiences of the educational trips
that strengthen the development of specific and transversal competences,
overcoming instrumental positions subordinated only to tasks without
contextualizing the process of integral formation and giving way to a broader
conception of the educational process.
These instances construct new collective
work environments in the process of their practices, as opposed to the
conventional ways of thinking about training as devices only linked to reduced
spaces in disciplinary terms. The creation of these environments, in the
meeting and the exchange, in the recognition and the valuation of the knowledge
and the practices of the teachers and the students, provide new ways of
approaching the educational event in the context of the “other”.
On the other hand, the environments
provided allow for an understanding of formal and non-formal educational
institutions in their various contexts, recognizing their dynamics and giving
meaning to the different realities that cross them as a condition of
possibility and encounter. For Unda Bernal (2001) the device would break with
the homogenizing pretension of teacher training designed according to a
standardized school.
This is how the institutionalized device
of the Pedagogical Trips puts the student at the center of the training, who
becomes a passionate protagonist of his or her own learning process based on
collaboration and synergy in collective work; vital competencies for the
professional development of future graduates of the Faculty of Education of the
Catholic University of Salta.
Without a doubt, providing the conditions
for the development and strengthening of competencies of graduates of the
aforementioned teacher training programs constitutes a political commitment to
curricular management on the part of the Faculty of Education that has involved
pedagogical decisions focused on the student and on formative evaluation
throughout the entire training process.
The value of the experience lies in the
possibility of thinking, saying and doing in the pedagogical field. Far from
all dogmatism and experimentation, the experience allows the subject to reflect
on himself from the point of view of passion, giving rise to the receptive,
spontaneous and willing student from his own fragility.
The subject of the experience is not, in
the first place, an active subject, but rather a passionate subject,
predisposed, open, exposed. This does not mean that he is passive, inactive:
from passion also emerges an epistemology and an ethics, perhaps even a
politics, surely a pedagogy. But it is about always maintaining in the
experience that principle of receptivity, of openness, of availability, that
principle of passion, which is what makes it so that, in the experience, what
is discovered is one's own fragility, one's own vulnerability, one's own
ignorance, one's own impotence, what again and again escapes our knowledge, our
power and our will (Larrosa, 2003, p 4)
The availability of the student in the transition from experience allows for
the strengthening of one of the transversal competences of the training of
UCASAL professionals with regard to participation in work teams in order to
achieve training objectives in response to contextual challenges. In this
respect, the device allows for the development of:
Skills related to interpersonal
relationships and group work, which involves adopting a pedagogical paradigm
based on listening and attentive and respectful dialogue with others in
different contexts, motivated towards common goals in a substantial device of
encounter with the other. In the process, students develop and strengthen these
skills in the exercise before and after the pedagogical trip, since they are
the protagonists of the tracing of the coordinates so that each trip becomes an
experience that goes through them and does not position them as mere
spectators. In this way, new bonds between students-teachers-community and
environment are strengthened and re-created.
With regard to the specific skills of the
teachers, the Pedagogical Trips program allows for the development and
strengthening of the management of teaching and learning:
Skills related to the planning of teaching
and learning from a multi-referential analysis, framed in the complexity of
diverse scenarios. Students promote situated learning proposals that articulate
identity axes of training (play and robotics) in the educational and social
environment, from the commitment and dialogue with the local community and
contemporary culture. The diversity of environments requires flexibility and
openness in a before and after that allows for the analysis and significance of
the experience from the subjectivity of each student.
Materials
and methods
Throughout 2024, spaces have been created
after the Pedagogical Trips, with the purpose of collecting the traces that
have crossed the students of both teacher training courses, from their
experiences.
From a qualitative approach, the record
has allowed us to analyze the meanings attributed to the device developed in
the different contexts.
Students begin their pedagogical trips in
their first year of the degree. The program for both teacher training courses
is arranged in the first year around the institutions of the Calchaquí Valley Region with semi-rural characteristics.
The experience is planned around School No. 4399 Adolfo Güemes, Locality of
Barria, Department of San Carlos and School No. 8134 “San Agustín” in the
Locality of Divisadero in the Department of Cafayate.
In the second year they travel through the
Chaco Region, General José de San Martín Department at San José School No.
4100, Yacuy Locality and 12 de Octubre
“Dia de la Raza” School No. 4167 in the locality of Tartagal).
The institutions have the characteristics of hostel and bilingual schools.
In the third year, the educational trip
focuses on the Puna Region at School 4244 Nevado de Cachi, Rio las Trancas, with a rural characteristic, a hostel in the
Department of Cachi.
As for the fourth year
trip, they take part in other provinces of the country through
inter-institutional agreements and protocols with the Ministry of Education of
the host province. The students take part with proposals in educational
institutions at the initial, primary and higher levels. From 2022, the trips
took place in the provinces of Chaco, Córdoba and La Rioja.
As for the international trip, the
experience to the city of Salta, Uruguay began in 2024, with visits and
interventions in educational institutions (Catholic University of Uruguay - UCU
Salto Campus; Salto “Rosa Silvestri” Teacher Training Institute, “Nuestra Señora del Carmen” Salesian School and institutions
associated with teaching practice at the initial and primary level of the
Teacher Training Institute).
The program has not only focused on educational institutions, but also on
visits to cultural, social, and natural spaces (Daymán
Hot Springs) and engineering works (Salto Grande Hydroelectric Dam) specific to
the region.
Each of the trips is planned jointly by
both teachers, taking advantage of the richness of sharing experiences that
promote cooperation, solidarity, empathy and pedagogical objectives around
learning situated in diverse training contexts.
Results
The relevance of the device lies in
maintaining a clear position regarding the value of experience in teacher
training as well as its instrumentation to construct what Dewey has called the
“continuum of experience”, a position opposed to the idea of supervision and
control in scenarios planned and adjusted to an ideal of modeled performance
that has little to do with the heterogeneity and complexity of contexts,
without considering the social, cultural and political nature of all
educational practice. Practices in the field that have led to a tendency
towards mere educational simulation (Keck and
Saldívar, 2016).
Considering the nature and identity of
each context that students go through requires thinking about a teacher
training project sustained by a comprehensive and dynamic approach that links
the spatial with the educational, promoting meaningful learning through
experience. Such an approach is based on the understanding that the
geographical environment influences social and cultural realities, so that the
analysis of different contexts enriches teacher training, by allowing the
recognition of the various socio-educational dynamics as a condition of
possibility and encounter.
The experiences of the Pedagogical Trips (a training device planned from a
pedagogical-didactic engineering perspective) allow for the articulation of
contributions from the geographical and socio-cultural spheres in order to
navigate through the various contexts and understand the educational processes
anchored spatially and socioculturally. This
articulation is based on the concept of geo-education, which was born as a new
expression to address education in its greatest complexity.
Understanding the processes of teaching
and learning from a territorial perspective implies recognizing the fusion of
subjects with the characteristics of their territory, beyond the criteria
established by an institutional logic of the educational sphere.
“The term Geo-Education, which was born as a neologism to address education in
its geographical fullness, that is to say everything that is addressed from the
territoriality where the school institution is located, to the development of
teaching within the classroom and educational agents, passing through the
formal and informal education that takes place inside and outside schools as we
define it as educational geospaces. Where the
environment is what provides education beyond the standards accepted by any
institution. Emphasizing the symbiosis of the multiplicity of adaptations and
reconfigurations of the individual in their territory in their geographical
area to which they belong and is a symptom of the creation of belonging to a
“geographical identity” by the individual”. (Yánez
Aguilar, 2018, p 2).
The integration of geo-education as an
analytical category of Pedagogical Journeys not only enriches the learning
experience, but also prepares future teachers to address the diversity and
complexity of educational realities that demand to be understood and named from
their uniqueness. Furthermore, geo-education contributes to the formation of a
critical citizenry that is aware of the social and cultural diversity in
different territories.
In our current context and from a
curricular policy of teacher training, recovering Dewey's concern for thinking
about praxis within education, we maintain the need to interpret such
experiences from the contributions of Jorge Larrosa.
"Our own life is full of events. But, at the same time, almost nothing
happens to us. [...] We see the world pass before our eyes and we remain
external, oblivious, impassive [...] We know many things, but we ourselves do
not change with what we know. This would be a relationship with knowledge that
is not experience since it does not resolve itself in the formation or
transformation of what we are” (Larrosa,
2003, p. 97).
Analyzing the field of education from Larrosa's perspective allows us, on the
one hand, to identify the barriers that hinder our ability to live experience
as an expression of the best model of education for our students and, on the
other hand, to scaffold the devices necessary to navigate singularity as a
characteristic of educational contexts in terms of their conditions of
“incomparable, unrepeatable, extraordinary, unique, unusual and surprising”
(Villada-Rendón, 2017, p147)
These experiences not only enrich personal
and social growth, but also generate interest and enthusiasm, foster inductive
and deductive learning, encourage analytical, reflective and creative thinking
and broaden the capacity to resolve problematic situations by promoting
collaboration throughout the entire training process.
This dynamic involves a certain curricular disruption, which brings into play a
logic of development that challenges what has become naturalized in the
processes of teaching and learning, such as training purposes, organization of
content, strategies, resources, evaluation criteria, times, spaces and
groupings (Puente, 2023, p. 12).
The transit through the different contexts
and realities offers an invaluable training value for the students of both
teacher training programs. By providing the space for significance from
the students' discourse, they express:
The contributions that the pedagogical
trips left me were of great learning to get to know other contexts. By
experiencing these trips I take with me an enriching
experience with the children, where I was also able to learn a little about
their cultures.
Getting to know other realities on the trips helps me to understand the
complexity of education, it is a whole to be understood.
Educational trips are essential for
training as a future professional as they allow us to observe and have
different perspectives on social realities and learn about them. They also
allow us to identify different educational needs and reflect on some strategies.
Learning about different areas of education, different ways of learning
The educational trips were moments of pure learning, unique experiences and,
for the profession, places that leave an indelible mark, places with an
authentic history and a thriving culture.
Educational trips are always an excellent
way of being able to see and get closer to other realities and schools.
Sharing and being able to listen to other
experienced teachers leaves us with many lessons and contributions for our
training.
We were able to work in different contexts
and learn about how people work in each of them, both in routine and
non-routine moments.
Seeing the different realities of the
students, making us aware that not everyone has the same opportunities
It helped me to become aware of the
importance of the adequate preparation that is needed to face the role as a
teacher in different sociocultural contexts.
I always take away positive experiences, they helped me to grow personally and
as a group, these trips helped me to get to know my colleagues better, their
ways of teaching, of thinking and feeling.
Above all, it allowed me to immerse myself
in other contexts and see beyond what a book can tell, it allowed me to
experience (briefly) the experiences of each person.
Teamwork and new knowledge from other realities and other contexts, each school
is a different world.
It was an unforgettable experience from my
first year, sharing, getting to know other environments, getting to know
different institutional logics. When I started my degree
I thought that all schools were the same, this helped me to see the whole
system differently.
The trips changed my mind, my way of
getting into education.
It was my first trip and it helped me understand that education is different in
each context despite its proximity and how cultural issues affect education.
This trip to another country provided more elements to continue thinking about
diversity. It was a beautiful experience from every point of view.
The trip to Uruguay crowned my graduation
this year not only because I was able to put everything
I had learned into practice freely, but also because it was my first experience
abroad. The expressions expressed by students from the 1st to the 4th year of
both teacher training courses only constitute a part of the data worked on in
the research.
The meanings given to the Pedagogical Trips allow us to understand the value of
the device in the training of the student teacher as substantial and nodal to
the course of their residencies.
The experiences linked to the field of
practice from the beginning of the training process, in relation to the social
and educational interactions they experience in diverse and real environments,
progressively stimulate and strengthen the acquisition of the skills required
to face the complex challenges of the 21st century, as well as the processes of
construction of the knowledge that will serve as a basis for their professional
practice and will transform and enrich the role of the teacher into that of a
guide and a kind of companion on the journey, overcoming the vision of control
of that roadmap
Conclusions
Pedagogical and didactic engineering
requires a comprehensive and dynamic approach that links the spatial with the
educational, promoting meaningful learning through experience.
The training project for primary and early
education teachers recognizes the value of classroom practice, in the words of
Dussel and Caruso, 1999, as a core and irreplaceable element of educational
institutions, and where, day after day, teaching and learning processes take
place that address curricular content and, therefore, build the raison d'être
of schools and universities. Its significance comes from its historical matrix,
which shapes realities based on the norms, rituals and devices of traditional training
models (Rivas, 2017). However, the richness of the project lies in a
pedagogical-didactic engineering that allows the most relevant elements of
those training processes in the classroom to be combined, as organizers of
categories that allow us to reflect on different realities, with new training
spaces designed from the device of pedagogical trips, which recover experience
beyond analytical categories. They recover the diverse, the divergent, the
plural, the dynamic, the heterogeneous. A device that runs through us from the
awareness of recovering the environment in which we live (Vilarrasa,
2003), also recognizing that this experience of leaving the classroom, of
leaving the institutions, is an action with a high symbolic content.
It is thinking about training from the
perspective of creativity in order to seek out and create spaces and
opportunities to learn and teach in a different way (Elisondo, 2015) and a
political commitment to curriculum management from the Faculty of Education
Thus, the importance of thinking of this
device as a practice lies in the fact that the student manages to get closer to
the surrounding, proximate, real reality, directly appropriating the complex
and immediate environment. In this situation, theory and practice confront each
other, as the concepts learned are corroborated and others are constructed (De Faveri, 2024). Furthermore, the educational problem can be
approached from the perspective challenged by the socio-cultural context in
order to achieve an approximation and understanding of the educational
phenomenon or event as an action intrinsic to the practice. From a social point
of view, this geo-pedagogical experience provides the possibility of
interacting with others, breaking with the monotony of the classroom routine.
It promotes research as the basis of teaching and the student enjoys learning
and having fun.
..........................................................................................................
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