The Teacher and Learning Groups: Participant and Maker? Or Mold and Fragment?

Abstract

This paper addresses the transformation of the traditional teacher, positioned within a unidirectional transmission of knowledge, into a coordinator of learning groups. This change entails assuming a new role and renouncing certain stereotypes that coexist in teaching-learning situations. It involves promoting and generating cooperative, transformative, meaningful, and creative modes of work in the appropriation of knowledge.

The transition from the role of transmitter and reproducer of information to that of group-coordinating teacher requires a change in training, incorporating theoretical elements concerning operative groups, as well as an attitude of openness toward the critical review of teaching practice.

Based on the research carried out in the project “Creativity and Alienation in Learning Groups,” observations were conducted in Practical Work classes of the Developmental Psychology and Social Psychology courses in the Health Education program, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National University of Jujuy. Some elements from that research are taken up in this paper.

From the group experiences, the analysis takes up, on the one hand, the frame as the delimitation and definition of the characteristics of the work and its configurations arising from the group, the teaching style, and institutional guidelines; on the other hand, the transference processes in the relations of the teacher-coordinator with learning groups and the positions taken in relation to the object of knowledge; and, finally, observation as an instrument of study for the coordinating function.

The teacher’s challenge consists in rethinking their activity within the framework of group work in the classroom, in order to carry out and develop the task, attending to the various elements that emerge and deserve particular attention.