The premise of the project lies mainly in investigating a local problem and thus achieving an improvement in its environmental environment, using a model from the National Geographic Society.

More than 120 schoolchildren from educational establishments in Pisco Elqui, Rio Hurtado, Monte Patria and La Serena are participating in the international project Geo - Inquiry, an initiative developed by the University of La Serena and the University of Northern Iowa and which is based on the use of a model from the National Geographic Society, in order to install investigative skills and enhance geographic education in students and teachers in training.

The researcher responsible for the project is Dr. Alex Oberle, academic in the Department of Geography at the University of Northern Iowa, and his co-researcher, Dr. Fabián Araya, Dean of the Faculty of Social, Business and Legal Sciences at ULS, who recently met with the Rector of the University of La Serena, Dr. Luperfina Rojas, to provide details of this initiative and the joint work they have been developing for 12 years in the area of ​​geographic education.

The premise of the project lies mainly in investigating a local problem and thus achieving an improvement in its environmental environment using the NGS model. Dr. Araya specifies that this is the first time that this project has been carried out in Latin America, and that it considers the work with teachers and students from the Cordillera School in La Serena, the Jerónimo Godoy Villanueva School in Pisco Elqui, the Pichasca School in Río Hurtado and the Eduardo Frei School. from Monte Patria, in addition to the participation of students of Pedagogy in History and Geography and Pedagogy in Basic General Education from the ULS.

“It is a great project, with different types of expertise to apply in the area of ​​Geographic Education, specifically, Geo Inquiry,” says Dr. Alex Oberle, who highlights the possibility of working with this model in the educational community of the Region. of Coquimbo, thus allowing the teaching of the necessary skills to reason geographically.

While Dr. Sandra Álvarez, an academic at the ULS and who participates in the project, maintains that as part of the work carried out, a kit of 10 didactic sheets for geo-inquiry was prepared (focusing on a specific geographic space in the world), to be used in basic and secondary education students, under the Geo Inquiry methodology validated by the National Geographic Society. “This methodology allows the future teacher, which is where this work is framed, to look at teaching from an innovative approach, even from an approach based on inquiry, which is what we care about installing in the initial training of teachers today,” explains the teacher.

In the meeting with Rector Rojas - where the Academic Secretary of the FACSEJ, Mg. Patricia Cortés, the ULS academic, Dr. Sandra Álvarez, and the Director of International Relations, Mg. José Mora, the highest university authority, valued Dr. Oberle's visit, stating that it is relevant to continue carrying out joint actions with the American university in pursuit of the development of geographic education and didactics.