Abstract:

The history of Ecuador, its ethnicities, roots, and identity refer to cultural heritage. This topic is treated in schools and colleges without much concern to develop a deep understanding of students. The lack of awareness of cultural heritage is due to the little knowledge about the heritage of our country. Heritage, as such, manifests itself in a tangible and intangible way to show our roots, our origin, where we are from, and where we are going as a current society and is an inherent part of the population's lifestyle. The objective of this research is to identify the curricular contents related to cultural heritage in the junior high schools of the city of Machala and create educational tourism strategies. A descriptive and exploratory investigation was applied to obtain more precise information about the environment. Through the use of descriptive research, the relationship between the different variables of junior high schools was identified, and with it, the results of the knowledge level of the Cultural Heritage were obtained. The methods applied in this research were qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative methods allowed learning about the number of people who agree and disagree. Qualitative methods, such as the interview, were applied to a small sample of people to learn the problem and obtain specific data accurately. The type of instrument that was used in this investigation was surveys with multiple-choice questions, based on the Likert scale method, which gives exact results of the problem verification. Another instrument was the interview, which allowed us to learn the kind of instruction and teaching methods instructors apply in one private and public junior high school classrooms of the city of Machala and thus improve the level of knowledge of the students. Furthermore, information about the curricular contents of the schools of the city of Machala was collected from the Ministry of District Education 07D02 Machala. Likewise, the respective categorization of each of the contents of the private and public junior high schools was collected to apply surveys to students and learn what the level of knowledge about cultural heritage was. In conclusion, the students of the two junior high schools are not very clear about the issue of cultural heritage. After analyzing the results, it is recommended to develop educational tourism activities to facilitate students understanding of curricular topics such as rescuing values and cultural identity. It is also recommended to organize field trips in order to encourage students to improve their knowledge of cultural heritage. Another advice is developing a tourist route to learn about the cultural heritage in the province of El Oro, and carry out educational class activities. In this regard, the researchers analyzed the findings of some authors such as Orozco (2016), who maintain that all the teachers of the different institutions should carry out their didactic activities and implement new experiences within the classroom to improve student performance. Finally, according to Silva (2013), educational tourism focuses on all the efforts of a student entity that provides instruction and teaching methods, the teaching of customs and traditions which are part of a town, and that are considered as a cultural heritage within the location.

Keywords:

The history of Ecuador, historical heritage, junior high school, methods, curriculum content, educational tourism.