Abstract:

The newest world tendencies in education lead to transit from a paradigm centered on curricular contents to a paradigm centered in the students learning processes. Teachers will now have to plan, implement, mediate and evaluate the educational intervention practices with a look oriented towards the actions and interactions that promote the students’ resources mobilization so that they are able to transfer their knowledge(s) to a myriad of contexts. Thus, in their role of companies, besides learning about theories and techniques, teachers will also need to try out new strategies and adopt other attitudes, on a trial and error basis. But, how to observe their practices and their effects on the teaching and learning plans they set up for their students? How to evaluate in order to make the pertinent adjustments? In other words, to become companies-mediators, teachers will have to reflect on their reflections, to observe their observations, to listen to what they say and they will need for themselves a company-mediator in their own formation-transformation process.

As part of the activities of the Diploma “Transition towards the learning centered paradigm” , carried out in the framework of the Permanent Program of Teacher Education at the Autonomous University “Benito Juárez” of Oaxaca (UABJO), three teachers from different knowledge disciplines carried out the action-research of their teaching planning and implementation used in their teaching practice. With this experience as a reference, the teachers carried out a meta-reflection of their own teaching practices as a consequence of the experience of taking the role of being their peers companies-observers in the trials of changes that these performed in their devices oriented now towards a learning centered paradigm.
Reflection upon reflections was made with emphasis on the adopted attitudes in front of the group in order to create a classroom atmosphere of interaction in trust as opposed to a stressful classroom atmosphere, as well as on the evaluation of the processes instead of the evaluation of contents.

The second-order observation (Arnold, 1998; Gibert-Galassi y Correa, 2001; Raglianti, 2006) is the methodological tool that allowed them to identify and analyze the reality in the classrooms where the teachers made modifications to the devices of the courses, taking into account the feedback networks of observations that support each other and under certain emotions derived from the observation of themselves through peer observation and reflection.

References:

Arnold Cathalifaud, Marcelo (1998). Recursos para la investigación sistémico-constructivista. Cinta de Moebio, abril, número 3. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Chile, Chile.

Gibert-Galassi, Jorge y Correa, Beatriz (2001) La Teoría de la autopoiesis y su aplicación a las Ciencias Sociales. Cinta de Moebio, diciembre, número 12. Pp. 8-30 Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Chile, Chile.

Raglianti, Felipe (2006). Comunicación de una observación de segundo orden: ¿Cómo puede seleccionar el investigador sus herramientas? Cinta de Moebio, diciembre, no. 27.Pp. 77-85.http://www.facso.uchile.cl/publicaciones/moebio/27/raglianti.html

Keywords:

second-order observation, accompanied devices, action research, multidisciplinary context, higher education teachers, learner centered paradigm.