UNIVERSITY OF ARUBA

WORKSHOP

ESTABLISHING COMPETENCIES
BASED PROGRAMS: THE
TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS
 Angel R. Villarini Jusino, Ph. D.
University of Puerto Rico
Project for the Development of Thinking Skills
Hispanic Network of Educational Collaboration
Organization for the Development of Thinking
www.pddpupr.org
arvupr@prw.net
 SISTEMATICITY AND COHERENCE
IN THE CURRICULUM AND IN THE
TEACHING PROCESS

PHILOSOPHICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL-POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS

NEEDS-INTERESTS-VALUES-CONCEPTIONS ABOUT
SOCIETY, HUMAN BEINGS, PROFESSIONS AND KNOWLEDGE

GOALS AND ACADEMIC LEARNING TEACHING

ASSESSMENT
OBJECTIVES CONTENT PROCESSES PROCESSES
 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

REFLECTIVE-CREATIVE-CRITICAL THINKING

CAPACITY FOR
INFORMATION PROCESSING KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION

combining
MENTAL MENTAL MENTAL
REPRESENTATIONS OPERATIONS DISPOSITIONS

In ways that can be

AUTOMATIC SYSTEMATIC CREATIVE CRITICAL

in order to

PRODUCE BELIEFS POSE PROBLEMS ESTABLISH

AND KNOWLEDGE COMMUNICATE GOALS AND
AND FIND
SOLUTIONS AND INTERACT MEANS
 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
MORAL AND ETHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

MORAL
VALUES

MORAL MORAL
JUDGEMENT SENSIBILITY

MORAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
MORAL
DELIBERATION

MORAL ACTION
(WILL)

ETHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
HISTORICAL-CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS:
- DIMENSIONS AND ELEMENTS
UNDERSTANDING
INTERDEPENDENCY
INTERNATIONAL INTERCULTURAL
SOLIDARITY COMUNICATION

GLOBAL AW ARENESS OF
NATIONAL HIS/HER HISTORICITY
DEFENCE AWARENESS

APRECIATION HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE

OF NATURAL PATRIOTISM OF HISTORICAL
AND CULTURAL HISTORIC CRITICAL PROCESSES
PATRIMONY CONSCIOUSNESS
CIVIC
AWARENESS
NATIONAL HISTORICAL
IDENTITY
METHOD
CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS
SOCIAL (citizenship
POLITIC AL
RESEARCH
DELIBERATION
CIVIC POLITICAL
PARTICIPATION
 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

COMPETENCIES AND THEME OR OBJECT OF STUDY

SKILLS VALUES
CONCEPTS
PROCESSES ATTITUDES

LEARNING OUTCOMES
(GENERAL OBJECTIVES)
 Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes express in executive terms what we

expect students to have learned, that is to have achieved
by the end of the unit of instruction.

The achievement of the learning outcome is expressed in

the activity that the student display in a given task.

Learning outcomes reflect:

• how students think and understand something they
have studied.
• what they are able to do with what they know.
• the values and attitudes that guide their understanding
or doing.
 ACADEMIC CONTENT THAT FOSTER THE
DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCIES

As educators we value that knowledge which we understand is

conducive to our educational goals and objectives. In general in
our western historic-cultural tradition we value “knowledge” as
“that which will make us free”. We firmly belief that through
knowledge human beings learn and develop the kinds of
knowledge that will allow them to understand and transform their
reality in order to achieve their goals.

But our conception of what knowledge is and how it affects the

learning and development processes of human beings was
revolutionized in the XX century. We no longer view knowledge
as something that is literally passed on as a thing by some
authority, the father or mother, the teacher, to the initiated, that
is the learner, but as a meaningful interpretation that needs to be
constructed in their symbolical interaction.
 Knowledge construction and human interest:
Knowledge construction for what?
• The cognitive instrumental interest in understanding reality to
achieve technical control over objectified processes. Here
reality, human needs and goals are taken as given, as facts,
and our concern is with the means through which that reality
or a particular aspect of it can be manipulated in an effective
and efficient manner in order to achieve those needs and
goals.
• The cognitive practical interest in understanding reality as
culturally mediated through language in order to achieve
consensus about ways of acting in relation to it. Here reality,
human needs and goals are taken as part of cultural traditions
that constitutes a common knowledge out of which through
rhetoric and dialogue a community of interpretation and
action can emerge.
• The cognitive emancipatory interest of becoming self-
conscious of human reality as mediated through power
relations expressed in discourse and forms of consciousness
and that can promote relations either of domination or
emancipation.
 Pablo Freire
• Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which
the students are the depositories and the teacher is the
depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues
communiqués and makes deposits which the students
patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the
"banking' concept of education, in which the scope of
action allowed to the students extends only as far as
receiving, filing, and storing of the deposits.

• The banking concept of education regards men as

adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work
at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they
develop the critical consciousness which would result
from their intervention in the world as transformers of
that world. The more completely they accept the passive
role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to
adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of
reality deposited in them.
• The teaching-learning activity that he proposes so that praxis
will be achieved is one of concientization, the process of
constructing self-consciousness. That is a form of
consciousness that is guided by a dialectical thinking in which
factual society and factual human beings are confronted with
an ideal (a “dream” as he sometimes calls it) of the human
being and of society so that present society and human
beings can be criticized as alienated from the more humane
possibilities that that same reality contains. This
consciousness implies the emergence not only of knowledge
but also a feelings of indignation and an energy (will) to
change that reality.

• As the situation becomes the object of their cognition, the

naive or magical perception which produced their fatalism
gives way to perception which is able to perceive itself even
as it perceives reality, and can thus be critically objective
about that reality. A deepened consciousness of their situation
leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical
reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives way to
the drive for transformation and inquiry, over which men feel
themselves to be in control.
 ACADEMIC RIGOR AND EPISTEMOLOGY
IN THE CURRICULUM OF INTEGRAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENL
For the different disciplines, representatives of different forms of
knowledge, to be able to contribute to human integral development,
it is necessary to keep in mind that:
• 1st What we try to accomplish through education is not merely
the transmission of a body of knowledge, but the development of a
form of thinking (processes and conceptual frameworks), forms of
interpretations of reality and rational persuasion.

• 2d What should be emphasized in education, more than

anything else, are those pertinent data, concepts, methods and
attitudes, which the student can integrate in his/her thinking and
use as instruments to interpret information, solve problems,
establish objectives, take decisions and interact with persons in
his/her natural and social contexts.

• 3d Academic disciplines should be taught as a practical and

historically-culturally conditioned human activity, with consecuences
with respect to values and power relations. The disciplinary
processes and concepts should be conceptualized as intelectual
constructions, open to revision and change.
 CURRICULUM CONTENT THAT FOSTER
COMPETENCIES DEVELOPMENT

• Pertinent knowledge
(individual and social)

• Conceptual structures that organize knowledge

• Modes of knowledge
(knowledge construction processes and methods)

• Knowledge integration
(Multi, Inter and Transdiciplinary knowledge)

• Values and attitudes

 LEARNING PROCESSES
Fostering human development through
competency and knowledge construction

• The formation of individual persons, their identities,

values and knowledgeable skills, occurs through their
participation in some subset of complementary activity
systems, starting with activities in which they are
involved with family members, then in school and on
into activity systems of work, leisure and so on. From
this perspective, who a person becomes depends
critically on which activity systems he or she participates
in and on the support and assistance he or she receives
from other members of the relevant communities in
appropriating the specific values, knowledge and skills
that are enacted in participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
• From this perspective, development is a process of
learning with the help of another that mediates our
activity and allow it to be organized and conducted at
a level of complexity that won’t be possible to
achieve without that help. Through that mediation
aspects and the total control of the activity are still
external but they start to become internalize
precisely by that mediation. This space and process
of interaction through which human beings learn and
develop was called by Vygotsky the zone of proximal
development.
 NEEDS
IAL INTERES
TS
C
O
- O-S IAL
VALUES A IN
O CAPACI N Q
BI SIC NT TIES A D U
C S IR
P TE TI T Y
PO V U
ION
APPRO LTURAL

IT D
ATION

IE Y
SSES

S
PRIAT

O TS S
THE CYCLE OF
ADAPT

PROCE

R EC N
U

P BJ IO
AND C

S
AUTHENTIC

D O CT

N
A ITH RA

S
LEARNING

E
W T
IN
LE

N
AR
N
IN N AL
G A TIO CE
UC N
ED PERIE
EX
REFLECTION
 CRITERIA FOR AUTHENTIC LEARNING

MEANINGFUL: the student is able to:

• relate his study with his needs and interests;
• establish intentions and to engage him/herslef
afectively;
• work at a level which is appropriate for his/her
development and learning styles.

ACTIVE, the student is able to:

• implement actions in real or semi-real situations;
• Develop means or manage instruments;
• Design or produce something
REFLECTIVE, the student is able to:
• Use his/her thinking abilities;
• Plan and supervise his/her own study and learning
process
• Evaluate the results of his/her own learning.

COLABORATIVE, the student is able to:

• Develop social competency;
• Give, receive and incorporate retro-comunicatation;
• Coordinate his/her objectives and actions with those of
others.

EMPOWERING, the student is able to:

• Develop comptencies or abilities;
• Overcome passitivity with respect to reality;
• Transform or master an aspect of reality.
 EDUCATIONAL MEDIATION
N T
PR GU COMMUNICATION EA
S M I
AC IDE (DIALOGUE) S E R
TI D SE I T
CE AS CR

LEARNING
PREVIOUS AT THE AIMED-AT
HUMAN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT ZONE OF
PROXIMAL
M
E DEVELOPMENT AF OR
N C FE AL
V A CL C T I A N
E IM ON D
N

L
O

A T AT
RE M
TI

OD E E
RA
O

EL
AB

IN
LL
CO

G
 TEACHING-LEARNING GENERAL STRATEGY
(STRATEGIC PLANNING)

EXPLORATION CONCEPTUALIZATION APPLICATION

- Attention and - Establishing - Guided practice

interest inquiry goals in - Formative
- Activation of relation to evaluation
prior knowledge competencies -Establishing
and competencies - Posing problems Criteria for
- Motivation - Collecting assessment
- Reflection, information - Assessment
metacognition - Fostering activity
- Diagnostic interpretation - Summative
assessment - Concept evaluation in
- Goals setting clarification terms of outcomes
- Clarification of - Arguing - Feedback
learning outcomes - Evaluating
 CONDITIONS FOR METHODS FOR
MORAL MORAL
DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT
 CLARIFICATION OF VALUES
 COMMUNITY
(“CONVIVENCIA”)  MORAL DILEMMAS

 MODELING  MORAL DELIBERATION

 REWARDS & PUNISHMENTS  SOCRATIC DIALOGUE

 MORAL ACTION-RESEARCH
 PERSONAL COMUNCIATION PROYECTS
AND DIALOGUE
 MORAL DRAMATIZATION
 EMOTIONAL BOND
(“VÍNCULO EMOCIONAL”) REFLECTIVE-MORAL DIARY

 MORAL ANALYSIS OF
 REFLECTION–SEARCH FOR LITERARY WORK
CLARITY AND COHERENCE
 COOPERATIVO MORAL
 MEANINGFUL PRACTICE LEARNING