According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) teaching It is one of the professions with the least risk of automation. This does not mean that the teacher profile should not be transformed, on the contrary, the accelerated advance of technology in the market demands a change in teaching models, including teachers.
“The dynamism with which the market and the experiences in today’s world change mean that the traditional way of transmitting the knowledge in the classroom not be enough; Education requires teachers to develop multiple competencies, along with the ability to design meaningful learning experiences, in which students are at the center of the process.
According to specialists in the educational area, these changes in the technical skills and soft skills that the market demands in the labor force, also require teachers to become facilitators and builders of knowledge.
This May 15 is celebrated Teacher’s Day in Mexico, an occupation that has just over 2 million people in the country, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). This date was established in 1917 and is to recognize the work of the teachera profession that has more and more challenges and in the face of changes in the market, a greater need to reinvent itself.
In the last 15 years, our country has undertaken efforts to migrate from a model in which teachers have all the knowledge and give a lecture for an hour without interruption, to a scheme where the teacher build knowledge with your students.
“You have to go to a competency-based model instead of a Napoleonic system of education, that is, where the teacher knows everything and sits in front of his students and they just listen to him. Now with the internet and smartphones it is no longer necessary to have the teacher in front of them, sometimes the kids have more information and more up-to-date processes than the teacher who is in front of them”, explains Carmen González Armenta, general director of Higher Education at the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP).
In this sense, the official points out that our country needs a transformation of the teaching in which knowledge is built within the classroom. “I, as a teacher, do not necessarily have to know everything, but rather create the conditions so that we can generate knowledge and say: look, this is the new machine in the world and it works with these characteristics and then begin with everyone to see what the laws of the physics that are applied in that machine”.
The Institute for the Future of Education of Tec de Monterrey proposes that the teacher as knowledge facilitator has the following functions:
- Organize learning as a construction of competencies
- Design the topics based on activities carried out by the students
- Design strategy to approach learning as an investigation
- Design activities for experimentation and work in different scenarios
- Promote interaction between the classroom, the institution and the outside world
- Design and introduce new forms of evaluation
“Until a while ago it was thought that the most important thing was the professionalization of teachers, their teaching, what they said, did and thought. Today, the teacher must break with that idea, get out of that mistake and admit that the most important thing is the learn from studentswhat they discover, what they do, think, say, project and organize, with the help, guidance and mediation of the teacher”, highlights the institute in its report Competency-based education.
Keys of the new teaching staff
Caroline Mendoza, in charge of Learning Operations for the Talisis platform, is aware that teachers represent a change to train resilient professionalscreative and that know how to solve problems .
However, in the experience of the former director of Academic Liaison at the Inter-American University for Development (UNID), in order to develop in students the skills that are in high demand in the market, the teacher must have these characteristics:
» 1. Facilitate learning
This means going from being a transmitter of knowledge to generating the initiative and knowledge motivationregardless of the educational level at which the class is taught.
The theoretical part on many occasions, says the specialist, the student gets it through the internet. The challenge is how to make this information that is just a click away practical and useful. “The facilitator is committed to teaching the student to make use of this information in a meaningful way.”
» 2. Educate with emotions
The trainer has to love the profession and transmit that passion to the students in order to train it with love. It is key to educate with emotions and by example, “we believe that the word convinces, but the example drags. Here the trainer it becomes a key piece that what he wants to transmit is something that he also experiences in the first person”.
This helps students apply this concept in their working lives.
» 3. Recreate practical situations
“We need trainers who are sensitive to what happens in the real world, who have experience even in the real world so that they can put into practice many situations of Problem resolution that they can work with our students”, exposes Mendoza.
» 4. Comprehensive training experience
Not only do you have to train good professionals, but also good people. That is, better citizens who care about their society, who are socially responsible.
“An educational model It has to be immersed in these transverse axes of humanities so that in this talent training we really do not forget the integral training part, ”he adds.
The specialists agree that the development of digital skills It is one of the greatest challenges facing teachers in our country, but they recognize that the teaching profession is willing to advance in this.