Continuity and Change in Institutional Educational Projects: A Case Study

Abstract

Every change generates a crisis, and a change in authorities also represents a situation in which multiple factors interact with one another, affecting as a whole the entire educational community inserted in that structure and organization. Any modification affects its identity, its ways of thinking, and its ways of acting, with crisis situations leading either to positive advances or to regressive stagnation and disintegration.

This paper examines the change in authorities at an Occupational Training Center in the interior of the province of Jujuy. In this type of educational institution, teamwork implies that each member of the educational community is irreplaceable, since each fulfills a specific role. For this reason, such a change in authorities will inevitably require a readaptation of all members.

The categories of analysis we propose to investigate are: a) the institution and its constitutive components; b) the Institutional Educational Project, change, and crisis; and c) adaptation, reformulation, and identity.

The methodology employed is comprehensive-interpretive, seeking the interpretation, reflection, and understanding of specific spatio-temporal situations. We approach and analyze the beginning of this new process and its development during the 2005 school year, knowing that the results will only become visible over time under the new administration.