Director of the Dept. of Cs. Sociales exhibits at the International Colloquium on Didactics of Geography

arg colloquium

Specialists from various Latin American countries participated, who had the opportunity to present their presentations and research, in addition to sharing points of view in internal work tables. 

Within the framework of the III International Colloquium of Researchers in the Didactics of Geography, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the director of the Department of Social Sciences of the University of La Serena, Dr. Fabián Araya, participated as a speaker with the topic “Contributions of "Research in Didactics of Geography in Teacher Training: the case of the Dominican Republic and Chile."

The event developed by the Latin American Network of Researchers in the Didactics of Geography (REDLADGEO), is an academic space that promotes research and innovation processes in the teaching of geography in school contexts of all levels and grades of the educational systems of America. Latin; The Network is interested in providing theoretical, conceptual and methodological elements that feed back into teacher training processes.

That is why Dr. Araya, through his presentation, wanted to value research in geography didactics as a necessary process for the development of new knowledge in this area of ​​scientific knowledge.  

In the first part of the presentation, the ULS academic presented the results of a research project carried out between the Geographic Education Program of the University of La Serena (Chile) and the Dominican Section of Geography of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History in jointly with the School of Geographic Sciences of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) of the Dominican Republic. The objective of the research, in the context of the development of systemic spatial thinking, was to analyze the teaching strategies used by teachers in both countries and identify the spatial skills that they privilege in their daily practices. To develop the research, methodological workshops were held and surveys were administered to a sample of teachers. The results indicate that there are differences between the teaching strategies used by teachers in both countries, according to different sections of teaching experience and the type of skills they privilege, favoring those of conceptualization and representation over those of reasoning.

The second part of the exhibition, meanwhile, consisted of the presentation of various research seminars-workshops, worked as a pedagogical strategy and carried out with teachers from the Coquimbo Region, in order to contribute to generating learning guides, aimed to the development of systemic spatial thinking in middle or high school students.

Specialists from various Latin American countries participated in the Colloquium, who had the opportunity to present their presentations and research, in addition to sharing points of view in internal work tables. 

The REDLADGEO Colloquiums are meetings in which their members share spaces for dialogue and debate with focused works, which allow them to contribute valuable elements to Latin American school geography. For this reason, the format of the Colloquium prioritizes conversation, the possibility of questioning and problematizing our teaching and research task.