DR. JUAN FIDEL ZORRILLA ALCALA

IISUE, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,

Av. Universidad 3000, UNAM, C.U. D.F. 04510 Mexico

GENERIC COMPETENCES AND

SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICAL

EDUCATION.

PREPARING A NEW LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT

FLORENCE ITALY, OCTOBER 2013

Mexican post elementary education has had to cope with an ever-growing number of students finishing Upper Secondary

Education (USE) since the middle of the 20th Century.

In 1950, Higher Education (HE) in Mexico had a modest student population of 40,000. Today it has 3.5 million students.

Faculty also grew at the same pace and, historically, throughout the Education System, hiring teachers had a prevalence over training them.

As a consequence, HE institutions have been facing a student population with inadequate levels of academic performance in reading, writing, Mathematics and Science.

This situation is widely acknowledged and institutions have enacted different programs promoting higher pay and bonuses for having PHD degrees and higher quality academic productivity.

General education context in Mexico

On the other hand, the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has not been considered a priority by institutional policy. Improvements in General Competences(GC) like literacy, Mathematics and problem solving are unsurprisingly tardy and unsystematic. Teaching and learning continue to emphasize retaining abstract knowledge, definitions, procedures and algorithms.

In this paper it is argued that Science and Mathematics teaching in HE can be substantially enhanced by means of educational research and development support focusing on GC.

Support consists of expert collaboration, with faculty, for the development of PCK regarding the promotion of two GC in their courses: i) literacy and problem solving, and ii) Mathematics and problem solving.

Phase I consisted of a survey reviewing all academic activities undertaken so as to promote GC throughout the institution. Results showed over 250 different activities including regular courses, with little in common.

The survey suggested three strategies:

i) A commission to propose an indicative definition of the GC in view of an incoherent dispersal of activities grouped as GC. The commission submitted its proposal in V/2013.

II) To align the design of the entrance examination.

iii) To organize, at a small scale, an education research and development program to promote a teaching culture committed to PCK, innovative academic assessment, collegiate work and the development of GC.

An invitation was issued on Jan 2013, open to all faculty undertaking teaching during the Spring Term and willing to work with GC. Surprisingly, in terms of discipline, out of 42 teachers admitted, only 8 belong to the Social Sciences or the Design and Architecture Divisions. The rest are from Mathematics, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Medicine.

Applicants had to submit a letter of intention describing why they expected GC to contribute to improving teaching and learning practice in their courses.

A six hour long workshop was set up to transform the intention into a schematized proposal of intervention for their own courses.

42 teachers wrote a schematized but detailed proposal of intervention and 36 successfully worked and concluded the program.

Experts visited twice participating teachers, revising and commenting their interventions and the writing of partial reports. Partial results were be presented in a poster session organized for all participants.

The report’s final draft was revised twice. 36 concluded the project successfully with the submittal of their final report.

There is a clear contrast between the views expressed by participants initially in their letters of intent with what they reported on line, in a questionnaire. Initially, the general opinion emphasized mostly students’ problems.

On the letters of intent, out of 25 considerations for participating, 23 alluded to difficulties or academic inabilities students had vis a vis:

Working, applying or interpreting mathematical expressions;

Describing graphs, understanding the determination of tendencies and the interpretation of the occurrence of minima, maxima and derivatives;

The integration and application of content knowledge:

The discussion of their argument persuasively in any given text;

The development of the high level of concentration on intellectual and academic work that is required of them;

To infer conclusions and plausible hypothesis either from the literature or from research;

To elaborate original ideas and to discuss them convincingly.

As the project unfolded, these tenets began to change. In the visits paid to participants, once the Spring term had begun, in the five campi, most teachers – many of whom have the highest academic standing and have a long academic experience stretching over twenty or more years - were very surprised to admit that under the new perspective offered by participation in the project their own routines and methods showed inconsistencies and inefficiencies.

When participants were asked on line with which statement they agreed more. One option stated that priority should be given to evaluate a course in terms of achieving the objectives stated by the program. The other phrase said that evaluation should take into account the course’s program for identifying the direction of work with students, but the goals to be achieved in the course should also consider emergent objectives that appear during the course, given a certain student population. 21% agreed with the first statement and 79% with the second.

In a question in the on line questionnaire, teachers were asked whether they modified their objectives in the light of interaction with students. 79% accepted that they modified their objectives, while 21% did not modify them and confined themselves to the program.

It is clear that a very high proportion of teachers now consciously pay attention in their teaching to what happens with students. That is a different situation from the one prevailing in the letters of intention.

Again, in one further question, they were asked to choose which phrase expressed better their present opinion. The first option stated that generic competences were primordially a prerequisite with which students should comply before they entered university. The second option set forth that generic competences should be developed all along university studies as part of the general educational process of future professionals. Again the same 79% agree more with the second phrase, while 21% do so, with the first.

Another result that can be contemplated is that in a small but influential sector of faculty a consciousness recognition of the need for academic collaboration between Science and Mathematics, on the one hand, with experts in education, didactics and pedagogical content knowledge. This acceptance seemed only a year ago, improbable if not unrealistic.

One feature that must not be overlooked is that the methodology used for working with teachers is in itself a model for promoting the development of academic writing and problem solving with students as well.

But, beyond these important local results, there are also relevant implications for academic and teaching work in institutional environments where education standards and the possession of indispensable generic competences is below desired levels.

The lesson is perhaps that faculty can hardly afford to be paralysed by poor outcomes, which often result in depressive moods and isolation. Faculty has to change and to move on. That can be done, but institutional support is required. Otherwise the lack of communication that is typical of poor teaching and learning situations often leads to academic frustration and student attrition. In educational terms, this amounts to a never-ending, educational blank-mindedness which results in wasting a significant proportion of teachers and students time.

In terms of the experience here reported, there is a way out: to integrate individual teaching by means of institutionally supported academic research and development projects, which produce stimulating and exciting professional results. Under these conditions, teachers can experience working to the rhythm of dialogic collegiate work and can also envisage the means of furthering both their own competency in writing academically valuable texts as well as furthering two main generic competences.

Juan Fidel Zorrilla Alcalá

fpertinente@yahoo.com.mx