UC Education Colloquia: Learn about the latest research presented

Check out the latest presentations from the 2025 Colloquium Series here.

Sharing and discussing research findings by the Faculty's academics is the objective of the Education Colloquium Cycles, meetings organized by the UC Education Research Ecosystem, made up of the Research Department of the Faculty of Education, the Doctorate in Education and the Center for Educational Policies and Practices, CEPPE.

Check out the latest presentations from the 2025 Colloquium Cycle here:

Myths and Reality about University Teacher Evaluation in Pedagogy Programs

Professor Edgar Valencia He shared progress on his Fondecyt Initiation project, "Validity, Fairness, and Consequences of the Evaluation of University Teaching: The Case of Initial Teacher Training Programs." During his presentation, he proposed a critical look at current evaluation processes, focusing on the instruments used to collect information on teaching, particularly the questionnaire administered to students. "What I see is that there is an already established capacity to conduct these surveys. It could be a super timely and flexible tool, and contribute to this culture of continuous improvement, but there are many questions and observations about how it works," Valencia emphasized.

Feeling (un)recognized as a pedagogical authority. Voices of Catholic Religion Teachers

Professor William Zamora presented the findings of their study. The research, funded by the "Go and Teach" competition (2023-2024), investigates the experiences of 147 Catholic Religion teachers working in Catholic and secular schools. The data reveal a persistent phenomenon: teachers perceive their pedagogical authority to be under-recognized, a phenomenon linked to the decline in religious adherence and the perception of the subject as irrelevant within the school curriculum.

Challenges and Possibilities for Intercultural Visual Art Education

The assistant professor Veronica Garcia-Lazo presented the results of its Fondecyt Initiation Program, which explored how visual arts teachers in public schools from different regions conceptualize and embody interculturality in their classrooms. The study combined posthuman theories of intertwining and the Mapuche Azmapu worldview, proposing a relational ethic that visualizes the interdependence between human beings, non-human beings, and the environment. "There is an absence of formal conceptualizations of interculturality; instead, intuitive ideas linked to personal trajectories emerge," noted García, who emphasized that curricular, infrastructure, and teacher training limitations restrict robust interculturality. Among the projections, she proposed revitalizing indigenous knowledge orientations to ignite imagination and encourage students to generate new knowledge.

New perspectives on the UC Pedagogy Practice System

the academic Olga Espinoza presented the progress of the FONDEDOC 2024 project, focused on a proposal to update the UC Pedagogy Practice System Manual. The initiative, developed by an interdisciplinary team from the Faculty of Education, seeks to integrate the disciplinary specificities of the various teaching programs, based on the analysis of Generative Practices (GP) and their implementation in courses. Among the findings are the need to clarify the theoretical referents of the training model, the diversity in the application of practices according to the revised syllabuses, and the lack of emphasis on the pedagogies of practice in the current manual. The presentation was commented on by Florencia Gómez, also a UC Education academic, who contributed a critical reflection from her teaching experience