DESAFÍOS Y ALTERNATIVAS EN LA FORMACIÓN INICIAL DE LOS PROFESORES DE EDUCACIÓN BÁSICA (CICLO DE SECUNDARIA) EN LOS PROGRAMAS DE LA ESCUELA NORMAL SUPERIOR DE MÉXICO

Abstract

The initial formation of teaching personnel has been, in all ages of institutionalized education, an activity with specific issues, different from those of any other profession. For over 75 years, The Escuela Nacional Superior de México (ENSM) has had an outstanding participation in the initial formation of junior high school professors, which must be understood as a professional preparation for teaching activities (specialized furthermore in an educational area) to obtain a bachelor’s degree which certifies its exercise. (Greybeck, 2009). The present case study was performed in a range of one year; as of 2010 the investigation was started; however, it was not until half this year when field work was done. To collect data it was necessary to do bibliographical research, develop interview scripts, and implement a “survey regarding junior high school term professors’ proficiency in initial formation” which was applied on 100 students of the last year of the junior high school major at ENSM (n=100, which represents 21.65% of the population with these characteristics), as well as data and observation processing in what could be called a field journal. This work begins from the belief that in all educational systems, professors represent its primary mechanism, since the more competent they are the more positively and directly they influence their students’ learning, and the quality of education that is offered to them is also improved. Therefore, it proves be important to start a review of all professors’ initial formation, who are to graduate from ENSM, to ask ourselves, how much have these programs developed expected proficiencies according to the graduation profile of the study plan of the junior high school education major program 1999 still xviii effective? What challenges does professors’ initial formation offered at ENSM face? And how can these professors’ initial formation quality be improved? The objective of the present case study is to systematize elementary school term professors’ initial formation experience, who are enlisted in the last year of the junior high school major at ENSM. Educational policies in the last few years have made the proficiency focus present, changing the way of understanding education and forming professors, mainly the ones who deal with the population of elementary school in our country. Study plans and programs of the junior high school education major 1999 (LES), the junior high school education reform 2006 (RES), and the alliance for the quality of education 2008 (ACE), have represented a defiance for ENSM to be a leader for many years in junior high school professors’ initial formation in the country, and in the last few years, to become the main responsible of forming the great majority of the teaching staffs who teach at the junior high schools in Mexico City. All the knowledge, abilities, skills, attitudes, values, beliefs, intuitions, perceptions, and practices which allow professors to encourage their students into developing their own learning proficiencies essential for life, are reflected in the LES study plans and programs, leading them to the development of 5 desirable traits of the graduation profile: 1. Specific intellectual abilities, 2. Management of elementary education purposes and items, 3. Didactic proficiencies, 4. Professional identity and ethics and, 5. Capability of perception and response to the social environment surrounding the school. xix Before this matter, professors in initial formation soon to graduate from ENSM find themselves facing important contests. Among all findings are the importance of the difference between professors in duty and those in initial formation at ENSM, the rejection from other higher education institutions as the reason why they decided to become junior high school professors as well as the tendency to overestimate their learning and development of teaching proficiency, but not the formation on investigation and evaluation. In order to increase the level of development of teaching proficiency and improve the quality of education offered, it is suggested that ENSM focus its efforts on visualizing them as an opportunity to lead the teaching practice into performing integrated tasks which respond to real-life problems of their duty as former of to-be professors and, at the same time, demand from professors in initial formation the development values, attitudes, and abilities, the attainment of knowledge, and application of professional skills and knowledge. The reforms, from the point of view of professionalization, sets a new scenario which may impact directly on the quality of education of professors in initial education. Nevertheless, there are other factors which must be considered all the same, such as the profile of professors who are to be involved in the formation of others, and their enlisting and graduation profile; the constant study plan and program evaluations for appropriate arrangements, graduates’ followup as a leverage to enrich such plans, programs, and didactic strategies, among many others. Elementary school professors’ task has undoubtedly been capital in all different moments of this country’s history; in today’s Mexico their labor is equally indispensable in the formation of Mexicans who can encounter the issues which the world nowadays demands from them, yet it proves vital first of all that they xx must be formed as individuals with useful knowledge, learning, and abilities for their profession and life, capable of learning permanently by themselves, having values and attitudes that enable them first to be people as a whole and then, education professionals