SOCIOFORMATION AND CURRICULAR MANAGEMENT

SOCIO FORMATION AND CURRICULAR MANAGEMENT.

A fast view to the book.

By: Rosalía Nalleli Pérez-Estrada.

rosalia_na@hotmail.com

Curriculum Design represents one of the most important activities for any institution.  The experts involved in this activity must have an open view of what they want to achieve when they plan a whole program. They also must take care of every little detail which will help them to meet the Institution´s philosophy, the student´s exit profile and the current requirements of the countries’ educative policy to work with; based on the analysis of process and approach more than in the study of punctual tasks. This can be seen with Sergio Tobón (2013) who tackles curricular management  from a Socio formative approach in his book. His main concerns would be easily identified if we dedicated to analyze the recurrent words used in it. Words such as competences, socio formation, curricular management, entrepreneurship, problems of the context, schools, professors, students, complex thinking, planning and follow up  could be the most repeated ones. All of these words included several times in his dream of proposing curriculum design by considering the conceptual cartography, as an strategy to build up scientific concepts, to design a curriculum by competences from the socio formation point of view and the application of a  curriculum (understood as a whole) in a school. The cartography, according to his definition, (2013:13) “consists on orienting the analysis, the building and the communication of a concept or theory through a series of key questions which are responded through the bibliographic analysis, the collaborative work and the search of agreements towards what is essential”. All this can be done, by considering the context, the problems that exist in it and a continuous follow up of the different processes of education, plus a continuous improvement.

But, undoubtedly, his main concern could be the right application of a competency based curriculum which could develop people´s growth as human beings, able to adapt at any circumstances, to solve problems of the immediate context  and to act ethically; with a wide commitment, by facing change; able to have a complex thinking to become successful.

 To achieve what is mentioned above - he recommends-, the institutions should have people involved in the continuous planning improvement of the curriculum, according to the institutions´ policies, because it is not static. Another important concern is when it comes to settle down competences in an institution:  he suggests to identify which type of competence based curriculum  the institution is going to develop. He states that curriculum cannot be applied without considering the Institution´s philosophy, the type of competence based curriculum (behavioural, constructivist, socioformative, etc, without being  eclectic) and the exit profile of the students. He points out the importance of building up a program of studies with a methodological coherence where its components answer to different goals, with a unified or oriented What for. The author also suggests that the institution must identify the type of competency based approach to be used, its implementation and the model it follows: he says that it is not possible to isolate students from professors and/ or from the principals.

All of this included in a world of a good, flexible and suitable curriculum management, fair, integral education, with fair evaluation, plus the design of curricular maps, a simple but no less important methodology of formative projects, innovation, complex thinking, professor mediation  for ensuring the socio formation, the continuous follow up that institutions must do to professors during the implementation phase of the curriculum. Besides, the curricular management must be articulated with the educative model, to achieve a simple process which tackles the different components of the system.

Many are the important aspects which may be rescued when reading this book and many are the tools that one can achieve after it. The form of facing education is changing in the XXI century and all the institutions involved in education should consider Socioformation as a very important tool to work with or at least, to know about its existence and its proposal. If it is not unique or the best one, it is definitely one of the best options that educators of the XXI century may use  in their class to have the quantum leap in education in order to improve their results.

Tobón, Sergio (2013), Metodología de Diseño Curricular. Desde una perspectiva Socio formativa. Trillas. México.