Teacher Alienation: How to avoid routine Professional?

From various texts of contemporary authors, articulate key ideas with the ultimate goal of outlining a reflection on the teaching activities in an attempt to restore the artistic dimension of practice

"If you want to learn, teach." -

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) Writer, Roman orator and politician

SYNERGY EDUCATION

The politician and orator Marcus Cicero enunciated, as in ancient times, the reciprocal relationship between learning and teaching. This close link, materializes today, more and less fortunate, in classrooms of vast socio-economic, cultural and various disciplinary fields.

This bidirectional and power, we could baptize as "educational synergy" only materializes when enabling certain features peculiar coexist, dissociated from the routine of memorizing as the only mechanism of study, rigid institutional programs, experiences away from desks, the dissociations between theory and practice of assessments that only proves the possibility of repeating concepts, the absence of criticism and the disappearance of reflection, meditation refers to the process.

? Angel Diaz Barriga, excellently addresses this issue, since the construction of a methodological approach that allows the teacher to converge the three levels of the educational program: the curriculum of the institution and the teaching itself.

From a non-instrumentalist, teacher professional faces challenges, and experience to combat what the author calls "routine training" and "alienation." In Barriga's actual words: "Giving a pilot teaching is a key element to combat professional routine and, above all, against the alienation in the teaching profession" .* 1

The Mexican, Doctor of Pedagogy, and made explicit at the end of the last century, a line of thought that had already raised the American philosopher Donald Schön seven years ago: the return to the concept of the art of teaching and focus on "learning by doing ".

Epistemological? AS. ENDS AND MEANS

The epistemology of professional practice in general, and teacher, has been shifting from purely theoretical frameworks strongly positivistic and technical thoughts, other dominated by the "doing". These latest trends put the accent on the consideration, meditation or, as is mostly called, on reflection.

Jurjo Santomé Torres, Professor of University Teaching and School in the Faculty of Education at the University of Coruña (Spain), in an attempt to understand what happens in classrooms, begins his foreword to the book "Life in the Classroom "Professor of the University of Chicago, Philip W. Jackson, summing up the theoretical framework of the late sixties and comparing its current development. Posed as the failure of technical rationality models, accusing them of being "unable to explain and provide adequate support in work situations in which teachers are involved." * 2

The thought merely technical and positivist conceptions, is focused on the effectiveness for purposes unquestionable and placed their trust in the scientific laws to explain educational phenomena, leaving aside the moral value of actions.

Under this framework, values, customs and beliefs guide the non-reflective action and routine. However, if we understand that the vitality of tradition, is subject to its ability to generate and manage change, we are on a critical aspect.

In contrast to the latter positivist, critical theory, stresses a weighing of circumstances and judgments, conceiving reality as a social construction. From here, it highlights the need not to ignore the context, particularly the classroom where, according to Jackson explicit classification take place between the concepts of multidimensionality, simultaneity, immediacy, unpredictability, advertising and the story. That is, a world of uncertainty and constant change.

At the same time, Torres Jurjo Santomé, raises different reasons for what he calls "schizophrenia between theory and practice" that rests on three pillars disastrous: the threat posed by "experts" on such theories and teaching practices that influence from their productions, the underestimation of the individual teaching and theoretical models that these "experts" have on how they should be teaching practices.

METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL

Is learning an outcome or a process? The different theories of learning converge in one or another answer to this dilemma. However, there is a consensus today on the particular importance of the process.

How to build, then the bridge between the curriculum and teaching? Between the process and outcome? How to link the systems and methods of teaching practical guidelines Institutional Programs? How to promote creativity and sensitivity to address the disciplinary field teaching?

Given these questions, Diaz Barriga, proposes the use of a methodology to articulate the particular disciplinary field with teaching. The method should not be reduced to a set of actions to perform, but rather, should include an overview of teaching strategies, cognitive vision, humanist, genetics and psychology.

The Mexican author, the method seeks to address three levels of conceptualization: a) as an epistemological problem, b) as a link with learning theories, and c) as an order of the stages of learning in the classroom.

Arising from these levels, several authors, including Hilda Taba Ph.D.,

thought raise the standard of global structure of the learning process on the following activities: a) opening or introduction, b) development and / or generalization c) closure.

But all these theoretical conceptualizations, can not transcend his own limitations but are implemented in the hand of the identification and recognition of socio-cultural, psychological and individuals in the classroom.

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

The doctor, lawyer, teacher, judge and as many primary roles of our society from centuries past, enjoyed a common privilege abounds today in demand and shortages in supply: the prestige, recognition of a society.

How can we doubt the word and medical diagnosis? How to put into question the son's reprimand by the school teacher? How dare question their words? Those were times of great figures of eminent professionals and stricter social guidelines.

"Professionals have established a covenant with society. In exchange for access to his extraordinary knowledge in matters of vital human society has given them a mandate on social control in their areas of expertise, a high degree of autonomy in their practice, and a license to determine who will assume the mantle of professional authority "* 3. Everett Hughes, a pioneer in the field of sociology of the professions, expressed the confidence that was deposited in the professional half of last century.

In his text "The formation of reflective practitioners', Donald A. Schön posed by this crisis and focused its attention in the training of professionals for claims arising in their practice, with emphasis on the verge of trust that exists today on the professional knowledge, in correspondence with the difficulty in preparing teachers.

The American philosopher shows that the centralization of the Colleges of Education of Professionals in your resume-established normative and positivistic aspects of technical rationality, it is inefficient, highlighting the lack of link between the idea of ​​professional knowledge introduced in the centers with the skills required really. It says so, the lack of education under conditions of uncertainty, demonstrating the relationship between competition in practice and professional knowledge from an opposite point of view.

ARTISANS OF TEACHING

How to teach the great masters of yesteryear without formal academic programs without clear methodological system? How potter taught his disciple on the work of pottery and clay? How does the carpenter managed to convey to his heir the detailed work of the wood?

The "professionalization", at least in certain connotations, was a substitution of art for systematic knowledge, preferably scientist. Re-establish the quota necessary intelligence and improvisation inherent in the practice is a challenge of new school that proposes, among others, Donald Schön: return the concept of "art of teaching", focusing on "learning by doing" and guiding students through tutoring a good action, encouraging the making of a dual curriculum in vocational schools, to provide legitimacy for the training of professionals.

REFLECTION AND ACTION

In seeking an answer to this paper I argue that wields on how to prevent the teaching task becomes empty routine, devoid of meaning and purpose, we find the concept of "reflective practicum" proposed Schön. This concept must be understood as practices that seek to assist students to obtain essential art forms to be competent.

Adding to this concept, it expresses the "knowledge in action", referring to the insight that is revealed in the intelligent actions of human beings, whether observable from the outside or circumscribed to private operations. Through observation and reflection can make a description of the tacit knowledge. To this, the American philosopher, calls it "reflection on action", where the activity takes place once the event has occurred or during a break in it. Thus, a teacher who is short of excellence, you can integrate these ideas in action, concurrently with the task to run, being a "reflective conversation" or "talk back". This view underlies the midst of a constructivist conception of reality that teachers face, to consider them as architects of their practice sites.

CONCLUSIONS

The complexity of our academic reality consists not only of didactic and technical challenges. The context, which certainly exceeds the four walls of the classroom, and the values ​​that underlie all teaching activities, are also part of highly complex and interwoven particular conditions the what, how and what we teach.

This problem of reality, coupled with the continuous extension and variation of knowledge of particular disciplinary field, explicit the need for an organization of learning activities related to the subject, a requirement for exploration of our own experience and that of the same students, and a renewal requirement on our abilities, talents and inspiration, summarized in what we call "art."

Read this material, authors of this quality approach and share experiences in teaching groups or forums, will gradually in raw, internal change, which may be translated if good intentions are channeled in a change to guide the teaching plural the teaching and learning, to a reality and empowering.

Breaking our own limitations, eliminating trivial routine and reassess the teaching profession is a daily challenge and in eternum, dereplanteo infinite doubt.