Lucarelli, E. (1998): "Higher Level Didactics.

Its distinctive notes (as a reference framework

for the subject). Lecture sheet. Publication of the Publications Secretariat of the Faculty of
Philosophy and Letters. UBA

HIGHER LEVEL DIDACTIC

YOUR DIFFERENT NOTES
(LIKE A FRAME REFERENTIAL
OF THE SUBJECT)

Prof. Elisa Lucarelli

The interest in this work is to present the notes that identify and characterize Higher Level
Didactics as a specific discipline within the Field of systematic reflections on the teaching process,
while presenting the referential framework, substantiating and guiding the development of the
subject. .
Without appearing as an area of interest within this disciplinary problem until late in this
century, Higher Level Didactics, from the perspective of this chair, is faced with the attempt to
produce instances that surpass technical proposals, which, in turn, It is confined by institutions (the
university, tertiary institutes that traditionally perceived it outside the field of scientific production.
Some considerations around a specific practice at the level, pedagogical advice at the
university, help us identify certain features that underlie the presentation that these institutions have
about the didactic field in action.
In the analysis of the responses to a questionnaire applied to pedagogical advisors who were
attending a postgraduate course 1 , which inquires about what the participants believe is expected of
this professional at the University, a large number of responses alluded to various images referring
to “a magician”, to the subject who at the same time must “validate an existing model and promote
change”; “be a link between the disciplinary substantive and the pedagogical-didactic”.
Despite the omnipotent and, at the same time, ambivalent and contradictory nature of the
demand and the image of the role itself, in almost all of the situations in which these
representations of the work of a pedagogical advisor in the university take place, their practice is
present. related to the processes that occur in the university classroom between teachers and
students, in teaching and learning.

This path is little explored from research and pedagogical reflection, which in turn leads to
questions about this disciplinary cutback of Didactics. What is Higher Level Didactics, or more
specifically University Didactics? What is your object of action and systematic reflection?

How does it differ in its disciplinary formation from other specific didactics? What do they
still have in common? To what extent do theoretical perspectives shape various images of the
actions of a pedagogical advisor at the university? Alluding to these topics, trying to address these
questions is the privileged purpose of these pages.
A descriptive conceptualization of its field of action will help in this reduction that is made of

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Lecture sheet The Didactics
the pedagogical sciences.

Higher Level Didactics, first of all, is recognized as a specific discipline within the didactic
field; As such, it is understood as a specialized didactics whose object is the analysis of what
happens in the university classroom and tertiary institutions, from where it studies the teaching
process that a teacher or a teaching team organizes in relation to the students' learning and based on
scientific, technological, artistic content, highly specialized and oriented towards the training of a
profession.
In this context, Higher Level Didactics is distinguished by the determination of a space built
by a particular group of teachers and students who relate around a specific content, teaching at the
higher level, making systematic reflection on practice possible. personnel and others in this
institutional field, in light of approaches, theoretical principles and information specific to the
discipline.

But what are the elements of singularity? Or in other words, how does Higher Level
Didactics fit within the general field of the discipline? To what extent does its epistemological
constitution process assume its own characteristics in relation to didactics focused on other levels
of the educational system? And finally: is the identification of a disciplinary structure that includes
general frameworks for the level justified or is its identity diluted in the set of specific didactics of
the subjects? Within this dilemmatic situation, what place does the profession assume as a
structuring element in university education?

An attempt will be made to address some of these questions based on the recognition of the
incipient historical configuration of the disciplinary field. Higher Level Didactics, unlike the
didactics that have been dealing for centuries with the problems that arise in teaching in the
classrooms of preschool, primary or secondary institutions, is a recent field of studies, whose first
systematic reflections are developed in recent decades. Consequently, while those disciplines
present significant advances in the construction of their object of study, in the social representations
of the institutional sectors and the need for their practice is legalized in terms of the respective
teacher training, Higher Level Didactics as a whole shows a very recent trajectory; its novelty as a
specialized field towards the challenges that its construction implies, at the same time that it must
face the controversies that are generated about the need for its existence.

Currently, her space as a guide to teaching practice at the level is a topic of analysis and
discussion. Once again, the recognition of the space that pedagogical advisors occupy as dynamic
actors of the practices that occur in the university classroom allows us to see how the legitimacy of
the discipline is seen in practice. Along with concrete and daily events that allude to the
devaluation, and even the denial of a didactic perspective in these areas, there coexists the demand
for a specialized activity that is oriented towards the quality of teaching to consolidate programs
that seek to improve offer at the level. "...renewal in universities generally consists of the creation
of new careers, with new subjects or new combinations and permutations of subjects. That is,
innovation usually revolves around what is taught. In this way, another inertia is perpetuated, less
perceptible than that of university power structures: the inertia of thinking about how to teach at the
university level." 2

The lack of scientific production on these problems exacerbates this situation of fragility of
the discipline. In fact, since the interest in didactic research at the level is relatively recent, its
production is not very numerous; In the academic events required of the university as a problematic
field of inquiry, there are few reports that refer to research on the practices of the university
classroom; Although the stage in which these works were the product of reflections of a more
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Lecture sheet The Didactics
philosophical than didactic nature seems to have passed, even today many of them are stories of
alternative experiences to the traditional ones rather than systematic reflections about practice. 3

Thinking about the field of Higher Level Didactics in these terms allows us to envision it as a
discipline that is slowly taking shape based on the recognition of a specific teaching practice, with
its own characteristics, which is reduced in doing and in systematic reflection. , which is identified
as a disciplinary field in construction.

In the case of our teaching practice in the scope of the Department of Education's curricular
offerings, the organizing purpose of the subject revolves around the definition of a field constructed
by a particular group of students, graduates and graduates, for reflection. systematic theory on
personal practice and that of others at the higher level, in light of approaches, theoretical principles
and information specific to Didactics.

These work perspectives, in addition to being an operational statement, reveal a certain way
of understanding and explaining the didactic problem, of locating oneself in the theoretical
framework of Didactics. In the case of our subject, recognizing that it was a Didactics in
construction, means recognizing it as an open, unfinished discipline, which is configured in the
articulation of theory and practice, through the generation of knowledge of what happens. in the
classroom,

Accepting these features as typical of the subject necessarily leads to the recognition of the
didactic perspective from which the directions are defined and the decisions for action are formed.
Addressing the problem of these references means we pose two fundamental questions: what
didactic model, what theoretical and evaluative perspective do the practices refer to; and at the
same time, how to use this model, in order to enable coherence in actions without falling into
formal constraints that inhibit creativity.

In this context we will locate two didactic perspectives from which to analyze the daily
practice of the teacher, the processes that it encourages in the university and higher level
classrooms: the perspective of technical instrumental Didactics and the grounded, critical Didactic
perspective.
The first perspective identifies the responsibility of Didactics to define knowledge of
pedagogical how-to: the identification and mastery of universal forms, regardless of purposes,
contents, subjects, social and institutional environment. 4
Its budget is scientific and technological neutrality, its principle, technical rationality, its
means, segmentation. Segmentation of educational practice and context, of content and methods, of
objectives and content, of processes and results, of programming as a proposal and its
implementation. 5

Contrasted with this perspective, from within Didactics and accompanying the processes that
occurred in the social scientific field, movements tend to review and critically construct the
discipline itself. The space of Higher Level Didactics also assumes the challenge of searching for
lines and developing theoretical constructions based on the recognition of the specific pedagogical
practices that occur in university classrooms.

Critical Grounded Didactics, starts from the affirmation of the processes of teaching and
learning, considering the confluence of technical, human, epistemological, and political factors in
the production of said processes. The contextualization of the actions related to the institution and
the society in which they are developed, to the subjects who carry them out and the content that is
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Lecture sheet The Didactics
the objective of teaching and learning, constitutes the second pillar of this perspective.

The lines that identify this critical and fundamental current of Didactics can be summarized
in these characteristics:

1) multidimensionality of the teaching and learning process, affected by technical, human,

political and epistemological variables, and which is derived, consequently, in the
contextualization of concrete practice,
2) contextualization that is influenced by the global social environment along with the
institutional environment, the content and the peculiar factors that characterize the actors
involved in teaching and learning;
3) the explanation of the assumptions from which it defines its methodological approaches,
4) the development of systematic reflections that arise from the analysis of concrete
experiences of teaching and learning, and
5) the search for efficiency based on the recognition of the real conditions in which these
processes are developed and with the purpose of expanding and improving educational
goals. 6

The leading role of the teacher and the importance of the theory-practice articulation give a
defining aspect to this perspective. It is through reflective participation in their daily activities that
paths that overcome current limitations can be identified. Carr and Kemmis, in "Critical Theory of
Teaching" summarize it like this:

"...critical social science uses the critical method to identify and

expose those aspects of the social order that cannot be controlled by
participants and that frustrate rational change: both its critical theorems
and its strategic organization for action are directed at eliminate or
overcome limitations that inhibit rational change
.......................................................................................................................
Critical social science is practical, since its orientation consists of helping
practitioners to inform themselves about the actions they need to take to
overcome their problems and eliminate their frustrations." 7

In the same sense, the articulation of theory and practice emerges as an articulating axis in the
construction of a Didactics that aims to overcome the instrumentalist vision of teaching and
learning; It makes it possible to link each action that takes place in the classroom with purposes and
foundations, allowing it to be subjected to reflection processes that can, in turn, form more
systematic and organic knowledge. As Fazenda points out "...the practice that constitutes a
criterion of truth is always that motivated by a purpose, that is, all true practice is closely
correlated with the end that man has in view and with the insertion in the productive process"
"...the ability to know a practice in its limitations and possibilities supposes the knowledge of the
intentions that determine or direct that personal, particular, individual doing,... only then will we
be in conditions 1 1... • • 1, .2:
8
to acquire new ways of perceiving, knowing and acting in other perspectives" 8

In the case of Higher Level Didactics, the theory-practice articulation takes on a very
particular aspect, since it is interesting not only for the configuration that is achieved in the didactic
situation, considering it as a fundamental factor in the development of a genuine learning process. ,
but also in relation to the construction of spaces oriented to professional practice as one of the

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Lecture sheet The Didactics
significant structuring elements that identify the level.
Along these same lines, the search for the structuring factors specific to this Didactic
requires considering the characteristics of the curriculum and the institution where it is developed:
the same complexity that characterizes the higher level both in its institutional perspective and in
relation to its offering. curricular, makes the uniqueness of this Didactics. The problems faced
when analyzing the teaching situation are crossed by the diversity of functions, which go beyond
teaching, but involve it, the type of actors involved, the management systems and the specialties of
the studies. offered at universities and tertiary education centers.
Some characteristics presented below are shared by both types of institutions, even if with
different degrees of significance and emphasis. For the purposes of these notes, they will be worked
on by appealing to what both institutions have in common, highlighting, when possible, the
differences.
From the institutional perspective, the characteristics of these centers, their history and their
present connote the tasks of the advisor and define the didactic field where they are developed.
Consequently, autonomy in government and management; in the actions of the academic and
curricular units, whether these chairs or departments; They define the network of relationships
where the advisory task is inserted. Working with teaching teams means taking into account that
teaching actions are combined with (and are often subordinated to processes of knowledge
production, given the mission of developing research socially assigned to the university; at the
same time as transferring the results to the social environment. The actors involved in teaching and
learning also offer peculiarities to the didactic definition of these actions: teachers who are
academics and professionals highly specialized in their area of substantive action, with little or no
pedagogical preparation and generally bearers of attitudes of rejection or minimization about the
need for this training; students, young people and adults extensively trained by formal education
and often with work experience, in some cases in the field in which they are training. Teaching and
learning practices are conditioned by these institutional peculiarities and demand for didactic
configurations that take them into account.
Tertiary training centers have been assuming, little by little, even if in a more tempered
sense, functions and characteristics of universities. In our country, for example, the regulations
guide these centers to assume functions such as research, not contemplated in their fundamental
mandates. How they approach it, what institutional space these actions have, how it is articulated
with the teaching function, it constitutes a field of reflection for Higher Level Didactics.
Complexity also characterizes the curriculum at the higher level, in terms of diversification
and specificity and it is from there that the task of the pedagogical advisor is particularized.
Understanding the curriculum as a project that includes instances of planning and development in
the classroom situation, the processes that have the university as their scope allow us to recognize
peculiarities that identify it, while differentiating it from other levels of the educational system.

In this regard, the curriculum at the higher level is identified through peculiarities such as the
following:
- It manifests, as a training offer, a high degree of specialization and diversification, in relation
to the scientific, technological or artistic content of the academic area or professional field in
which the training process is developed; This relevance that the content assumes at the level
makes it considered one of the significant structuring elements in the configuration of a
specific Didactic of this level;
- guides studies towards the training of a profession that has a particular relationship with the
world of work, both in the definition of the training profile and in the instances of preparation
in professional practice;
- It involves the joint work of a group of adults differentiated by the degree of mastery in the

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Lecture sheet The Didactics
 management of the knowledge and skills of the subject, and, consequently, with also
differentiated roles in the processes that occur in the university classroom;
-requires the teacher to organize methodological and evaluation strategies that are defined based
on the previously highlighted peculiarities, and that, consequently, are aimed at facilitating,
- the insertion of the student into the problems and competencies of the relevant professional
field; In terms of methodological organization, this implies providing for the development of
classes, theoretical moments articulated with practical moments, tending as a whole, to the
construction of the complex of practices that this profession entails;
- the recovery of the possible work experience that the student has, whether it is in any field or
in the professional training specialty;
- the confrontation of the common knowledge generated by the adult student throughout their
life with the scientific framework provided by the subject.
- the establishment of links between research actions, in development in the scope of the chair
or academic unit, and activities in the classroom, in terms of incorporation of these new
scientific products to the content of the subject, as well as also through the generation of a
space for learning skills specific to the researcher's "trade", including through the direct
participation of students in research projects; involves the student handling sources of
information of various kinds (experiential, written documentaries, audiovisuals, computer
sciences), as well as the possibility of approaching materials from different currents of
thought, from which they could build the specific knowledge of The subject.

The curricular proposal, framed in this way, demands study plans whose structure is
consistent with the specificities of the level and the characteristics of the actors involved. The
problems surrounding the formation of flexible organizations, in terms of subject optionality,
diversification of emphasis, and study regime, constitute, for Level Didactics, a source of
theoretical reflection and construction of appropriate intervention strategies. .

Given the preeminence of the profession in the configuration of practices associated with
teaching and learning, University Didactics has special interest in investigating the ways in which
the profession manifests itself in the curriculum. This problem can be addressed in at least three
ways:
-identifying the processes of constitution of the profession and its current characteristics;
-investigating alternative experiences related to specific training in professional practices;
-deepening the construction of an "epistemology of practice", in the sense of the definition of
didactic models proposed by Schon.
University Didactics, in its searches through research and classroom practices, forms its own
object of study around these themes.
In the same way, the particularities of the institutional context and the content, especially
through professional practice, operating as structuring of the methodological strategies that define
the action of the higher level teacher, makes this discipline seen as a Didactics of the relationships,
of the interstices. It is in the game of relationships between didactic principles and knowledge, on
the one hand, and the institutional characteristics (political, organizational, human), and the
specialty of the particular area of studies in question, on the other, that is cut Specific Didactics at
the University Level; It is in the common spaces, in the interstices that are established, that it finds
its most interesting challenges.

Hence, another topic of discussion within the discipline revolves around particularizing
University Didactics based on the different content areas with which it works. For example, the
Research Projects developed by this team address topics related to the processes of formation of
Specific Didactics, as is the case of those related to the biological field and the psychological field;
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Lecture sheet The Didactics
the characteristics of the training processes of teachers in Economic Sciences careers; the didactic
curricular structures in the chairs of the Veterinary Faculties; the problems in the configuration of
the role of the pedagogical advisor in the university. The advances and results in terms of
information production constitute starting points for specific didactic derivations.

Beyond these particularities it is possible to recognize problems that cross the field of
University Didactics, enabling theoretical reflections of a more general nature. Some of them are:
*the historical process of the professions, in its impact on the resolution of curricular proposals;
*multidisciplinary and specialty approaches in the level curriculum;
*the articulation between the macro and the micro in didactic-curricular projects, within
institutional educational planning and the problems of classroom practice;
*the theory-practice relationship and its resolution in the university classroom and higher
institutions;
*the origin and development of innovations in the higher level classroom;
*the challenges of teaching-research articulation in the university classroom.
*the teacher training processes at the higher level and at the university in particular, in the
search for appropriate modalities of didactic resolution.

Around these common problems and others specific to the specialties, the chair develops its
face-to-face activities (through theoretical-practical classes and workshop sessions in committees)
and guides independent work assignments, problems that are presented in the analysis. of teaching
and learning situations and data from research, in the development of individual and group
practices and in the formation of theoretical references. Material that as a whole contributes to the
construction of Higher Level Didactics.

GRADES
1-This is the Postgraduate course Paradoxes of a role: The pedagogical advisor at the University that takes
place during three semesters in 1995 and 1996 in the scope of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UBA.

2-Coraggio, JL. Pedagogical Reform: axis of development of higher education. UNGS, 1996.

3-In this regard, in the analysis of a recent academic activity about research that analyzes university issues,
Pedro Krotsch comments the following: "In relation to the presentations, it should be noted that they
focused fundamentally on the table of university pedagogy, At the same time, despite the importance of
the problem today, tables such as the government of the system and the institutions were poorly
represented in the group." (Krotsch, P.: "Is there a field of studies on the university? Regarding the First
National Meeting: The university as an object of research. In: IICE Magazine. Year VI, N§ 10. Bs.AS.
FFyL. UBA. April 1997.) Despite this quantitative emphasis, in the sessions of the Conference it was
possible to notice that the papers presented remained, for the most part, in the report of experiences of
chairs, with very few addressing the analysis of research in process. or completed.

4- Precise VM Candau: "it is conceived as a set of technical knowledge about pedagogical "how to do",
knowledge presented in a universal way and, consequently, unrelated to the problems related to the
meaning and purposes of education, the specific contents, as well as the specific sociocultural context in
which they were generated."CANDAU,VMRumo a uma nova didatica.Petrópolis,Vozes,1995,8¦,pp.13-14.
(There is a translation of Chapter 1 made by Claudia Faranda in an internal publication of the Level
Didactics Chair
Higher, Dto.Cs.Educ.,FFyL,UBA).

5-"The segmentation of the educational process, of the means used by the teacher as a form of

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Lecture sheet The Didactics
 "optimization" of the educational process, the detachment of the relationship between means and ends, the
interest in "terminal products", the application of models cybernetics to the planning and execution process
in education; lack of interest in communicative actions; external controls and external stimulation of
behaviors with the addition of rewards for good performance; These are some of the aspects that can be
pointed out in relation to the advancement of technology in this field." (Barco, S. Current state of
pedagogy and didactics; in Revista Argentina de Educación. Year VII, N§ 12.Bs.As. GACE, May-June
1989.)

6-this part follows the definition of characteristics presented by the Brazilian pedagogue Vera María Candau
(CANDAU,VMRumo a uma nova didatica. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1995,8§).In Chapter 1.Revisao da Didatica,
of Part I "Didatica: approach, object and content", the author presents fundamental and grounded didactics,
as an alternative to construct, pointing out at the same time to characteristics such as those mentioned
above in their capacity as guides of this process.

7-CARR,W and KEMMIS,S. Critical theory of teaching. Barcelona, Martínez Roca, 1988,.pag. 162.

8-FAZENDA,I.ARANTES: Interdisciplinarity and, history, research theory. Campina, Papirus, 1995, pp.71-
7

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Lecture sheet The Didactics