TRANSFORMATION OF THE TEACHING PRACTICE IN POSTGRADUATE LEVEL: A STUDY CASE

The Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN-Mx) is a mexican public university that looks for excellence of its graduate and post-graduate students in areas such as Engineering and Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Postgraduate department is a privileged place where innovating teaching strategies can be implemented to achieve this goal. However, at this level we still observe traditional teaching schemes which are characterized by the usage of a methodology centred on professors’ expositions and demonstrations.

The study case described here is a researcher-professor (RP) that works for IPN-Mx since 2011 in the M. in Sc. of Telecommunications Engineering department, and he teaches Microwave Circuits Engineering. When he was student he believed that if he followed all the instructions and behave as demanded by his teachers, one day he would be able to solve complex problems. When he started his postgraduate studies this unsustained belief collapsed. Despite of this, he managed to construct a strategy of work that helped him to tackle most of the problems that appeared during his postgraduate studies. At the same time, he realized that the traditional strategy of teaching is inappropriate to help students to develop the skills to solve complex problems. This was his motivation to implement strategies and approaches to improve his teaching practice. In the beginning of his carrier he implemented the traditional strategies of teaching. However, when he was in a training course of Science Didactics at IPN-Mx, he realized that there are other approaches of teaching, one of them is the constructive approach [1] where the professor becomes a companion in the learning process, the students participate actively during the course working in groups, all the ideas are analyzed and tested and eventually generalized, and where activities to demonstrate complex physical phenomena are analyzed by using recreational prototypes. Moreover in this teaching practice there are no errors, there are only tests. The activities in his new teaching practice are oriented to follow a learning process which starts with simple and concrete activities, and ends by solving problems in complex situations [2].

This work described a study case of a transformation of the teaching practice in postgraduate level. This study is performed under a phenomenological approach and represents an exercise of self reflection and self observation with the help of an interactive listener and guide [3]. This teaching practice changed from a traditional scheme to a non-traditional one.

Not only the RP did change his teaching practice, he also transformed his behaviour and mentality to implement a non-traditional teaching strategy.
[1] G. Hernández Rojas. Miradas constructivistas en psicología de la educación. Ed. Paidós Educador, 2006.
[2] J Jorba and E Casellas. La regulación y la autorregulación de los aprendizajes. Ed. Síntesis, 1997.
[3] Javier Burón Orejas Enseñar a aprender en http://es.scribd.com/doc/50545470/Buron-Ensenar-a-aprender-Introduccion-a-la-metacognicion#scribd. Revised march 21st 2015.