Three ULS programs together with Territorio Coquimbo are carrying out research that seeks to generate strategies for pedagogical transformation in early childhood education. The project is carried out in three educational establishments in Coquimbo: Escuela Peñuelas, Escuela Presidente Aníbal Pinto Garmendia and Colegio Hellen Keller, which are part of the educational innovation network of Learning Communities in the region.

The careers of Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education, Engineering in Business Administration and Mining Engineering; teachers and students of the Department of Education, together with Territorio Coquimbo - the regional team of the Learning Communities project - are carrying out a research-oriented analysis of what happens in the educational spaces of the nursery levels of the schools that are part of the network, to contribute to the co-construction of improvements in pedagogical practices.

The Learning Communities proposal, based on Dialogical Learning, has been implemented for 4 years throughout Chile and today contributes to the education of more than 80 schools, colleges and high schools, of which 38 are in our region. Thus, it seeks to contribute effectively to the learning of students, adding new forms of work in the classroom and, mainly, assuming that education is a participatory phenomenon that is based on social interactions where its different aspects must be integrated. actors: students, parents, teachers and officials.

Since 2018, Territorio Coquimbo has implemented the idea of ​​educational transformation in more than 30 educational establishments in the region and positive results have been obtained both in the academic field and in the personal and collective training of those who make up the network of Communities of Schools. Learning. The proposal is executed free of charge, where establishments receive professional advice and support in their transformation process for 4 years.

Investigative work of the University and Territory of Coquimbo

The research was awarded through the competitive fund of the Directorate of Research and Development (DIDULS) in the Applied Pedagogical Research line and links three establishments of the network of Learning Communities schools: Escuela Peñuelas, Escuela Presidente Aníbal Pinto Garmendia and Colegio Hellen Keller, who will participate as study centers for one year.

In this way, the entire school community is involved in the analysis, as well as encouraging and strengthening the composition of research teams among University academics, students from different careers, organizations such as Territorio Coquimbo and various actors in the educational system. where an analysis of the problems associated with learning in the classroom is carried out.

Among the objectives are to identify the presence of emergent learning opportunities and cultural intelligence present in students - which represents one of the principles of Dialogical Learning - within the schools that are part of the research.

Also, there is a tendency to generate dialogic educational strategies for the best pedagogical use of the cultural knowledge of the kindergartens of the schools investigated and thus, to be able to advance jointly with the actors themselves towards curricular transformation, considering qualitative techniques and instruments. and the construction of a statistical base that supports decision making.

Desirée López de Maturana Luna, Coordinator of the Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education career, concluded that “this is one more opportunity to generate joint, situated and collaborative work, which makes early childhood education visible and rescues the cultural knowledge of children and girls, who, from their own childhoods, contribute to school knowledge, giving it meaning and depth.”

Written by Javiera Villalobos, journalist Territorio Coquimbo CdeA