Education UC inaugurates postgraduate academic year with a talk by the Minister of Education

The Faculty of Education of the Catholic University will celebrate its 15th anniversary on October 80, connecting the training of teachers with evidence. Within this framework, the Postgraduate course of the unit inaugurated the 2022 academic year with the seminar “How do we impact the educational challenges of the country?”, which had the keynote talk by Minister of Education, Marco Antonio Avila, entitled "Towards the change of educational paradigm".

That was the tone that the celebration had, which was focused on debating the future changes and challenges presented by the educational system. In the words of the postgraduate director of the faculty, Natalia Ávila, “For the first time we are inaugurating the Postgraduate academic year as a whole – with the programs of Master y PhD -, because we believe that the country presents various emergencies that even precede the pandemic and we are forced to attend to it ”, mentioning some such as the mental health of teachers, school coexistence and climate change, which have been present in the public debate in recent weeks.

Challenges that are part of the commitment of the Catholic University, pointed out the vice-rector for Research of the house of studies, Peter Bouchon, at the ceremony: "And in this context we are celebrating today the 80th anniversary of the Faculty of Education, which has been in charge of training the teachers and professors of the country, with an important emphasis on postgraduate, and with the aim of contributing to public policies and with its training centered on the person”.

Towards the educational paradigm shift

The activity featured a masterful talk by the Minister of Education, Marco Antonio Ávila, who shared a diagnosis of the main changes that are urgently needed in the education system.

One of them is the existing debate over the Simce test which, for many, puts pressure on schools and teachers. In this regard, the Mineduc, in mid-April, announced the submission of a project that seeks to discourage competition in education. “I have never said that we should eliminate the Simce, but this cannot be a condition for a school to close. Whether it is a census or a sample? Let's talk about it. It is very strange that the State closes its schools,” he pointed.

Transformations that are necessary to move towards a change in the educational paradigm that installs educational justice, he assured, with a pedagogical approach based on inclusion, participation and that gives meaning to existing policies. “Why doesn't a school have decent dining rooms for lunch? Or why don't they have enough teachers to teach classes? Educational justice is much more than that, it is about the possibility that a student during her career feels that she is empowered to do what she wants to do, she can choose, and not all of our students have that possibility”.

Another focus that the minister mentioned was strengthening public education. "We have a tremendous debt with public education, an abandoned reform... this is the last opportunity we have as a country to have an educational system that responds to the needs of citizens," He pointed out that the support of institutions such as the Faculty of Education is essential: “These are transformations that we cannot do alone, we must do them together with universities, civil society, unions and social movements, because that is the hallmark of this government, we believe in participation and dialogue.”

Regarding the new challenges of education, Minister Ávila also mentioned the need to move towards a non-sexist education, This involves “having a conversation about power, how teams are structured, making a deep assessment of how diversity is understood,” and is part of the unit’s objectives, he said.

conversation pane

The entrance requirements to the pedagogy careers were one of the themes that marked the conversation panel carried out in the activity. The head of the Master of Education, Veronica Santelices, the head of the PhD, Valeria Cabello, and the Minister of Education, Marco Antonio Ávila, and was moderated by the dean Alejandro Carrasco.

For the academic Verónica Santelices, the barriers to access to the teaching career depend on “how we look at the quality of teaching. The prediction is not very auspicious for the admission tests that we have today in Chile. Neither is it for things like the ranking or the NEM, so we have an interesting space to advance in measurements that go into more detail with respect to the skills that teachers put into play in the classroom”.

In this regard, he assured that "We are making efforts, both from DEMRE and from the Faculty, to develop tests that measure teaching performance much more directly... work from a deeper knowledge of what teaching practice is to incorporate it into these."

An issue that also worries Minister Ávila, since "it is an issue that not only involves pedagogies, but also all higher education, which are the access models." How do you access the university? And if it continues to be only a measurement of a standardized nature. The PACE (or Higher Education Access Programs) have shown us to be a fairly fair educational policy and that allows a development that in the short term is equalizing the performance of students who have admission via admission test. One very important thing is that the pedagogies can open up to more combined exercises, effectively with scores and, why not, with other forms of access”, he explained.

See all the images of the event here

Relive the event here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tp_UKcXYNzc