Mendive. Revista de Educación, april-june 2019; 17(2): 167-182
Translated from the original in Spanish
The labor practice in the Technical and Professional Education. Its history
La práctica laboral en la Educación Técnica y Profesional. Su historia
Juan Alberto Mena Lorenzo1, Yudiel Aguilar Blanco2, Jorge Luis Mena Lorenzo1
1«Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca» Pinar del Río University. Pinar del Río. Cuba. Correo
electrónico: juan.mena@upr.edu.cu
2Provincial Directorate of Education Granma Province. Granma, Yara , Cuba. Correo electrónico: yudiel@ya.gr.rimed.cu
Received: January 8th, 2019.
Accepted: February 12th, 2019.
ABSTRACT
The labor practice, in the Technical and Professional Education, constitutes one of the new modalities of the practical teaching that bigger level of confusion generates in managers, teachers and specialists of the labor entities. Located in the area of specific professional training, those responsible for its execution, generally confuse it with the already traditional pre-professional practices. However, it has different purposes. The main objective of this article is to analyze the historical evolution of the practical working concept, given the current inaccuracies that contribute to its inadequate conception in pedagogical practice. An interpretative approach was assumed and, consequently, methods such as: document analysis, interview, testimony and key informants were used. As a result, an analysis of the historical evolution of the practical work concept was made.
Keywords: Technical and Professional Education; modalities of practical teaching; labor practice.
RESUMEN
La práctica laboral, en la Educación Técnica y Profesional, constituye una de las nuevas modalidades de la enseñanza práctica que mayor nivel de confusión genera en directivos, docentes y especialistas de las entidades laborales. Ya ubicadas en el área de la formación profesional específica, los responsables de su ejecución, generalmente la confunden con las tradicionales prácticas preprofesionales. Sin embargo, tiene propósitos diferentes. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo principal realizar un análisis de la evolución histórica del concepto práctica laboral, dada las imprecisiones existentes en la actualidad lo que, contribuye a su inadecuada concepción en la práctica pedagógica. Fue asumido un enfoque interpretativo y se utilizaron métodos como: el análisis de documentos, la entrevista, el testimonio y los informantes claves. Como resultado se logró realizar un análisis de la evolución histórica del concepto práctica laboral.
Palabras clave: educación Técnica y Profesional; Modalidades de enseñanza práctica; práctica laboral.
INTRODUCTION
With the start of the Special Period, Cuban Technical and Professional Education (ETP), like all educational subsystems, was also affected. The vocational training process was focused on the so-called productive school; practical teaching was conceived on the basis of production and service plans in which students with a high role participated. These plans, premeditated and intentionally pre-established from one school year to another, were designed following the logical development of the teaching-learning process.
The ETP process in the polytechnic school, with a wide assurance in material and human resources as a minimum guarantee for quality training, with the Special Period loses these indispensable conditions (Acosta, 2012). It was then that real awareness begins about the need for a more active participation of labor entities in the training of mid-level professionals as required by the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers (Mena, 2013).
Until that time, the process was developed in the school environment with incursions into the labor entities in stages of practices where, those that took place during the last year of the training cycle, were the most common. In the curricula, as will be seen later, other types of business practices were collected interchangeably in general, but their level of systematicity did not reach the regularity of pre-professionals.
In this sense, the growing need to train mid-level workers who, once graduated and incorporated into labor entities, energized and developed the affected national economy, made it necessary to think of new pedagogical scenarios and new educators. With this purpose, from the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, the spaces of the labor entities begin to be used and the participation of their specialists is considered for the development of teaching activities that were, until that moment, typical of Polytechnic schools.
In 2009, through the Ministerial Resolutions (RM) 109, 110, 111 and 112, the Ministry of Education of Cuba (Mined) assumed the use of the labor entity as part of the ETP process with the purpose of developing the teaching activities that were previously the heritage of the school (Mena, 2013). For this, it organizes the insertion of students in the teaching and extradocent activities, conceived as practical teaching modalities: practical teaching class, familiarization practices, practices to obtain the worker's qualification, technical information and job practices, integrative task, labor practices and pre-professional practices that have formed a set of professional pedagogical practices (Ministry of Education, 2014a).
Of all of them, the last two are the ones that currently bring the most contradictions for managers and teachers of the Cuban ETP.
The pre-professional practices, known as those that take place during the last stage of the initial training of the average technician, have always had as purposes those of consolidating and perfecting the professional contents acquired during the first part of the initial training in the polytechnic school and also , make the specializations that are determined jointly by the school and the labor entity, according to the needs of the latter. That is, students reach them with most of the basic and specific professional skills of the expired curriculum.
On the other hand, labor practices precede preprofessionals and have as their purpose the formation and development of specific professional skills that will later be consolidated during preprofessional practices; in that sense, each of them demands a different didactic conception.
Both present two elements in common (perhaps this is the origin of the controversy that forced to write this article): they are developed in the labor entity during the process of labor insertion, directed pedagogically by the specialist instructors and are intended for professional training specific.
Internships in labor entities have recently been adequately studied, both nationally and internationally, Ministry of Education, (2014b) ; Lucas, (2015); European Center for the Development of Vocational Training, (2015) ; Shulman, (2016); Flores, Fuentes and Mujica, (2016); Lesmes, (2017), among others. However, most of the results obtained refer to pre-professional practices.
This last element, together with the aforementioned ones, are those that, in the opinion of the authors of this article, have caused the existence of differences in managers, teachers and instructor specialists involved in the ETP process when conceiving both types of modalities of practical teaching.
Regarding these discrepancies, a group of Cuban researchers have made reference: Mena, (2012); Acosta, (2012); Mena, (2013) ; Aguilar Hernández, (2014); Benítez and Mena (2016); Aguilar Blanco, (2018) among others, when studying the practical work concept, as part of the teaching-learning process that takes place in the labor entity.
Despite this, there are still confusions in the differentiation of the concepts of labor practices and pre-professional practices, which indicates that the explanations given are still insufficient. Both the theoretical contributions and the criteria of dozens of teachers and managers of polytechnic schools and specialists of labor entities, verified by the authors of this article have revealed that although pre-professional practices are widely known, there is still not enough clarity on the practical work concept and its genesis. Proof of this is that more than 70% of respondents on the subject, consider at least one of the following statements correct:
In correspondence with the above, it has been considered necessary to make an approach to the historical evolution of the labor practice concept, given the inaccuracies currently in existence when confusing it with other types of modalities, mainly with pre-professional practice. Consequently, this is the purpose of the article.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The research was explanatory and followed the interpretative approach. It was developed in eight polytechnic centers of the Pinar del Río and Granma provinces belonging to the three traditional technical-professional branches: four industrial, two economic and services and two agricultural. In addition, we worked with 41 professors representing the three branches that were studying, at the time of the research, the first three editions of the Master's in Professional Pedagogy at the University of Pinar del Río. There were included in the population 17 specialists instructors and tutors of labor entities with more than 30 years of experience in vocational training of medium level.
As part of the search for information, several documents were consulted (RM 327, 1985; RM 109, 110, 111 and 112, 2009 and RM 254, 2013), Mined officers, doctoral thesis and reports from the ETP provincial management. The essential methods used were document analysis, interview, testimony and key informants in order to obtain information on the object studied.
Although more information was obtained from the revolutionary period, it was considered necessary to begin with a brief analysis of what happened since the nineteenth century in relation to the subject studied.
RESULTS
One of the first results obtained from the application of the instruments in relation to the practical labor concept, showed that although the word does not officially appear in Cuba until the first years of the 21st century, the majority of the interviewees identify by this term any activity of the ETP that is carried out in the scenarios of the entities of production and services or, simply linked to work as a professional pedagogical category.
This particular seems to be associated with another result obtained, considering that the managers and teachers interviewed also assume similar two other concepts: job training and work contexts. Finally, in most of the documents of foreign authors and institutions consulted: Lucas, (2015); European Center for the Development of Vocational Training, (2015); Lesmes, (2017), indistinctly appears this term also related to practices in companies. All this seems to converge in the indeterminacies that originated this article.
It could be inferred that although the concept officially studied is relatively new in the Pedagogy of the ETP, studying its history forces to study its genesis from the emergence of practices in labor entities with a pedagogical nature and, it is in the very emergence of the ETP schooling.
Stage from 1818 to 1959. First manifestations of the ETP schooled in Cuba
The breadth of this period responds to the fact that at this time there were no substantial changes in relation to the problem studied.
In Cuba, as in the world, the first existing vocational training model was that of learning in trades or non-school ETP, marked by its informal nature. It was learned by observation, by imitation, by tutoring; that is to say, the teaching of a certain trade did not have any program organized or intentionally structured (Mena, 2012). The apprentices, generally as children, were many years linked to work activities without other studies. They learned from practical experience, were instructed by imitating the actions and operations executed by the specialist. Work practices were work and work activity itself.
With the first Cuban technical schools: Nautical School of Regla (1818), School of Machinery of Havana (1845) and other Industrial Schools, emerged from 1854, whose largest and best exponent was the School of Arts and Crafts of Havana (1882), the model of professional vocational training was born in Cuba. These institutions, destined to the training for the employment of the most humble classes: the workers, tried to school the training that already existed according to the learning model in the trades (Mena, 2012), and followed certain educational strategies to teach practical occupations within its facilities.
The programs, based on practical content for the development of skills, were not developed, with exceptions, in labor entities; so you should not talk about stages of practice in these entities.
Characterized by schooled how to organize learning, ETP assumed a greater extent preparing students from the polytechnic, well - equipped premises where they incorporated to work as teachers or trainers workshop, experienced factory workers. Professional preparation was basically done at school, which in many cases moved away from the small workshop or the large factory. (Mena, 2012, p. 23).
However, the need to integrate students to work centers is recognized. With this conception some of the institutions graduated their students after they developed internship stages in the labor entities.
With the American occupation since 1898, the ETP generally assumed American behaviorist models. To this end, during the first half of the twentieth century some technical schools of various branches arose in which vocational training took place in the same institution. One could say then that during the colony and the neocolony there was no type of systematized practice in labor entities.
From 1959 until 2004
According to the results obtained during the process, the authors consider it necessary to divide the stage into several periods, taking into account the nature of the practices that took place in the labor entities.
From 1959 to 1970. Emergence of practices in labor entities
With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Moncada Program begins to be fulfilled. The solution to the problems denounced by Fidel Castro in his historical defense plea "History will absolve me", required scientific-technical development. It was unavoidable to build the technical-material base of the new society and for this it was necessary, in addition to technical and technological resources, to train the skilled workforce.
It is from 1959 when the Cuban ETP acquires a true pedagogical sense, like all education, and thus the training of professionals on the Martian conception of the link between study and work stands. In response to this difficult situation, the number of polytechnic schools in all branches of the economy and services began to increase and, with this, the enrollment of students and the faculty staff also increased.
The teaching-learning process that until then was developed in the areas of the schools, begins to be extended, through the internship periods, to the labor entities of the province. Both traditional labor entities, depressed by the American policy of brain theft and the lack of spare parts, such as those that were emerging during the first decade, begin to receive the students of the ETP during periods of increasingly extensive internships. In these practices you can find the first manifestations of work practices.
Although, in this context, work in real conditions is established as a great pedagogical factor, one cannot speak of a true didactic conception of teaching activities in labor entities.
The study plans and programs had a high practical and professional component. The need to increase productions and services in every way, the need for the maintenance and repair of equipment and parts together with the need for workforce, makes the students of the polytechnic schools link from the beginning to the entities labor.
It is then that certain modalities of practices begin to appear. Among them arise the so-called six by six plans; that is, six months in the educational institution and six months of internships in labor entities. Internships also arise for periods longer than 45 days, where students and teachers were linked to the main production plans of labor entities linked to their specialties. Both in one semester and the other, professional skills were formed and developed by participating, day and night, in the production and service processes.
It is a significant fact that during the last years of the 1960s, the Plan of the Military Centers of the ETP (Vice Ministry of Military Technical Education) begins with the objective of linking the technical preparation of these schools with that corresponding to the Military Service Required. During this time the participation of students and teachers in productive activities is maintained. The internship stages, generally for more than six months, did not always take place in labor entities related to technical and professional specialties; agricultural campaigns such as the sugar harvest predominated. An example of this was the 10 million harvest (1970) in which thousands of ETP students remained for more than six months.
Despite the benefits that undoubtedly constituted the different types of practices in labor entities for the training of mid-level professionals, it is curious that these were not included in the curricular projects of any specialty, which puts in doubt the official recognition of its pedagogical character.
From 1971 to 1990. Inclusion in the curriculum of internships in labor entities
In 1971, as a result of the reorganization of the Educational System, the Vice Ministry of the ETP in the Ministry of Education of Cuba emerges. The new subsystem is organized from three technical and professional branches: Agriculture, Economy and Services and Industrial.
Aguilar Hernández and Mena (2014), consider the signing, by the CECM, of agreements in which the responsibilities in the training of professionals, which were to be assumed by the Administration Bodies, as an element of transcendental importance in this period Central of the State, next to the polytechnic schools.
Among the most significant elements was the conception, evaluation, monitoring and improvement of the curricula of mid-level vocational training of all specialties, based on the integration of polytechnic schools with labor entities.
The new curricula elaborated in the 1970s and 1980s start from a common trunk where, in addition to general, basic and technical training subjects, for the first time they include internships in labor entities as part of the curriculum, although it was not recognized its labor nature but professional, its essence was similar to being considered as:
"Those that are carried out to link students to production and service activities during their training period, which may be carried out in any entity that meets the necessary conditions to meet the objectives of such practices" (Ministry of Education, (1985), p. 5)
The new measures strengthen the model of vocational training, based on a curricular conception with a gradual increase in the presence of the object of culture in the object of the profession. The designs tended to strengthen the general training and professionalization of the curriculum. At the same time, a greater understanding of the need for integration of polytechnic schools-labor entities is required. According to this teaching-learning model, the practical training in the school was carried out with the programmed participation of the students in the execution of production plans whose pedagogical-productive activities formed and developed the contents of each profession. This training was complemented by the development of internship stages in labor entities.
From 1975, as part of the curriculum, students begin to perform different types of practices in production and services (Aguilar Blanco, 2018), including:
- Preprofessional practices.
- The practices of the specialty.
- The practices in production.
- The practices to obtain the job qualification.
- Other practical activities.
As a distinctive element, pre-professional practices keep a significant difference with the rest. In general, the practices of the specialty, the practices in the production and the practices to obtain the labor qualification had in common:
- The acquisition and development of knowledge, skills, habits, attitudes and professional values.
- They should be developed at a time when they did not interfere with the production or service process.
- They should be attended by teachers of polytechnic schools.
- Students were organized in complete groups, brigades or teams according to the conditions of the labor entity.
Read how, despite the fact that in no case do the practices receive the adjective of labor, because of its content it has that character. During the 1970s and 1980s, polytechnic schools possessed a material base and insurances on inputs that allowed them to train and develop most of the professional contents of each specialty in the educational facilities themselves. In this sense, the mentioned practices served as a great support to the training that was developed in the school.
As an example of these types of practices can be mentioned:
- The teaching workshops of the Transport branch. Specialty Automotive Transportation.
- The practical teaching classes in electrical substations. Specialty Electrical Maintenance.
- The practical teaching classes in the transport workshops of the Ministry of the Sugar Industry. Specialty Automotive Transportation.
- The platoons of cut and mechanized shot. Specialty Mechanization of Sugar Production.
- Work in prefabricated plants. Specialties: Buildings, Civil construction.
- The construction and electrification of microbrigade buildings. Specialties: Buildings, Hydraulics, Civil Construction, Electrical Maintenance, among many others.
All were regular educational activities planned in advance, executed and evaluated jointly by professors of polytechnic schools and specialists of labor entities and developed with a strong intention aimed at job training. These manifestations arose in the 1970s and 1980s in the heat of the emergence concept of polytechnic school-labor entity integration; They are not developed due to the needs of the material and human resources of the schools, but based on the possibility of taking advantage of the potential of the labor entities and the organization of their productive processes for the training of the students in the solution of real professional situations. They were part of the practical teaching process that took place in the productive and field areas, polygons, laboratories, workshops, etc. of labor entities.
Pre-professional practices on the other hand, were understood by the Ministry of Education (1985) since its emergence, as:
«Modality of practical teaching that involves linking students to teaching, production, services or research centers, related to the specialty they are studying, to carry out a comprehensive practice in which they use the knowledge, habits and skills acquired up to that time in accordance with what is established in the corresponding curricula». (p.29)
They had as essential objectives on the one hand the consolidation, integral application and improvement of the knowledge and skills acquired in the development of the curriculum. To access this type of practice, students had to have developed most of the contents of the specialty.
The rest of the objectives of pre-professional practices seek the development of the contents of the work activity, the methods of planning, organization and operation of the labor entity and its discipline, etc. That is, what can not be learned in school.
As can be seen, preprofessional practices have a meaning for the process, which is somehow conditioned by the rest of the components of the process that preceded it during the development of the process generally passed in the polytechnic school, with some incursions into the labor entity to carry out the rest of the indicated practices.
These activities continued in the 1990s but the fundamental reason was the lack of material and human resources in polytechnic schools. In this way the fundamental cause of the 1980s went to the background.
From 1991 to 2004. Transformations of practices in labor entities
Although the conception of the integration process polytechnic school-labor entity in the 1980s was a significant and revolutionary step forward for the guarantee that it represented for the ETP, to a large extent its participation was conditioned by the official decrees of the CECM. Rarely were agreements taken outside the provisions of this body. As a result, ideas and joint proposals were not flowing or generated, to continuously improve a process where the workers of the labor entities themselves were formed.
As stated earlier, the ETP process was significantly depressed with the economic crisis that ensued when the socialist camp collapsed. Gradually the process developed in the polytechnic school was suffering from the gradual lack of material and human resources. Given the impossibility of polytechnic schools to offer effective professional training, due to lack of resources, it was tried to find solutions based on agreements with labor entities.
The teaching activities of practical education, the cornerstone of vocational training at medium level, were losing quality and effectiveness; The labor entity was then thought of as a pedagogical scenario for its realization. The fact that labor entities assumed practical teaching activities was not sufficiently considered, went through the economic difficulties of these entities, to fulfill their own social objects.
Although the practices of the specialty, the practices in the production and the practices for the obtaining of the labor qualification served as a great support to the practical formation that was developed in the school, when the latter were weakened and the first ones were not sufficient. The situation forced us to think again about the curricular transformation. According to Benítez and Mena (2016), curricula in the 1990s denote some ambiguities.
First, the structuring of the curriculum conceived in the 1980s, organized in areas of training: general, basic, specific, exercise of the profession and practical activities, changes in the plans of the 1990s to two areas: general training and basic and technical training.
Second, the practical activities conceived in the plans of the 1980s included different types of specialty workshops to be developed in the polytechnic school. In addition, they included practices in production, practices for obtaining the job qualification and pre-professional practices to be developed in the labor entity. In the 1990s plans, practices are reduced to specialty practices and pre-professional practices. A new type named as Other practical activities that are developed depending on the decisions of the polytechnic school is left open.
As can be seen, pre-professional practices are maintained in the curricula and the schools are given freedom to manage their own resources or develop the practices of the specialty where they can have more conditions.
This possibility meant that in certain centers of experience and with good working relationships with their labor entities, they conceived some practical activities in different contexts of production and services (Mitrans, Minagri, Micon, Minbas, Minaz, among others). But these good practices did not constitute regularity.
In the didactic order, although practical teaching activities were already conceived in the labor entity, practical activities are still seen in the labor context, only as organizational forms that allow: consolidate and deepen knowledge, and improve skills and habits, as well as developing values and interests in the conditions of the professional pedagogical process itself.
From 2004 to date. Emergence of the labor practices concept
The 21st century in the Cuban ETP was born with a new vision of the ETP process, given in the conviction, born and matured during the 1990s, of the need for an integration process polytechnic school labor entity as an indispensable condition for the effectiveness of the ETP process of any specialty. In relation to the practices in the labor entities, the only one that transcended intact, without changing its essence, to all the changes that occurred was the pre-professional practice.
Another element to take into account is that the insufficiencies of the ETP process analyzed previously force researchers to seek theoretical explanations. An example of this are the foundations on the ETP process provided since the last years of the 1990s by various researchers. Patiño, et al. (1996), argue that the true process of professional training is one that takes place in conjunction with the pedagogical and productive processes. For the first time, the integrative nature of the relationship between the polytechnic school and the labor entity is recognized as a principle of the Pedagogy of the ETP (Aguilar Blanco, 2018).
The Polytechnic School-Work World Integration Model specifies that the teaching-learning process that occurs in the integration of these two scenarios is conditioned by the work activity that students perform in the production process. Mena, (2012), believes that mid-level professional training should occur in those conditions that are more similar each day to the scenarios in which the professional will perform once graduated.
As can be seen, the problems emanating from the reality that characterizes the ETP, together with the theoretical results derived from the investigations, suggest the possibilities of using the labor entity beyond pre-professional practices. All of the above together with other socio-economic factors means that, starting in 2004, a transcendental change in the Cuban ETP will begin to take place.
As a consequence, new concepts in ETP begin to emerge as a technical bachelor, professional family and work practice, among others. The latter, to be developed in the labor entities, contains those practical activities of each specialty that until then took place in the workshops and teaching-productive areas of the polytechnic school in order to train and develop the specific professional contents.
The new conception of the ETP, emerged to model a technical bachelor, conceives the formation from a common curriculum in the first two years of the initial training cycle. This forces the organization of subjects in three areas of knowledge: general and basic training, basic professional training and specific professional training. So that the specific professional training took place preferably in the labor entities during the remaining years.
The pedagogical potential of the business scenarios and of the specialists of the entities as teachers of the ETP begin to be seen more strongly. This last element is transcendental, while the new teaching functions of this exceed the functions of the traditional tutor, generally reduced to the attention of students during pre-professional practices.
In the opinion of the authors of this article, during this first decade of the 21st century, the most transcendental changes in the vocational training of Cuban mid-level are being observed after the completion of 1975. The theoretical foundations emerged in the first years of the decade of the 2000, based on a Pedagogy model of the ETP, not existing in 1975, gives this education its own life, making it a branch of Pedagogy that takes place in two essential pedagogical contexts: the polytechnic school and the labor entity.
In the official order these criteria were synthesized in 2009 by Mined, in the new curricula of the ETP. The content of these plans tries to respond to the mandates of the country's management, discussed and decided at the VI and VII Congress of the PCC to train a professional producer with the leading participation of the polytechnic school and the labor entity.
In the theoretical and methodological order the foundations that explain this pedagogical process are given from the ETP Model shared between the school and the labor entity or vocational training in integration. The conception of this model is based on the fact that vocational training must take place from an integrative vision where both entities participate throughout the process. Thus, general and basic training and basic professional training are developed, preferably in the polytechnic school and specific vocational training, to a greater extent, is developed in the labor entity. As a result, school and work entity share training almost in equal time and conditions.
Its essential feature is the emergence of new pedagogical scenarios, while it is necessary that the practical teaching, so far developed in the school facilities, take place in the areas of the labor entity and its contents are taught by the specialists of this Last (work practice).
As a result of the changes and s systematized theoretical foundations MR 254 (2014b) is proposed. This, which repeals RM 327 (1985a), includes the practical teaching modalities in the labor entity related in the introduction, where labor practice is recognized as one of the most important.
DISCUSSION
As it has been seen, labor practice has been a concept with ambiguous meaning for many years. At the international level, authors such as Flores, Fuentes and Mujica, (2016 , p.24) and Lesmes, (2017) see it as a professional practice after graduation or simply as " … a job linked to the training area, where You can apply what you learned in the career or in a specific course, it allows us to assimilate these knowledge in a much more experiential way and thus incorporate them in a lasting way".
In the Cuban sphere, generally in this idea, without or with few theoretical foundations, all types of practices that have been carried out in Cuban companies during the last 60 years were included. It was, then, until the end of the 2000s, that no clarification had appeared that allowed a precise definition.
In the opinion of Aguilar Hernández and Mena (2014) and Aguilar Blanco (2018), this is the main cause that has led, on the one hand, to confuse the practical labor concept with that of pre-professional and as a consequence to conceive its development in the pedagogical practice of Same way in both cases.
Labor practice is a relatively new concept. Although it has been used since the first years of the 21st century, it is in 2014 that Mined officially recognizes and defines labor practice as:
«... the process of professional training that is carried out in labor entities to link students with productive or service activity, directly in jobs related to the specialty, developing basic professional skills defined by year of study & # 091 ; ... & # 093; contributes to the formation of a producer consciousness in the students ». (Ministry of Education, 2014a, p.22)
In the definition a contradiction is denoted, since in the curricula its realization is prescribed from the third year in which the basic professional skills must already be formed in the students. This modality exceeds the development of basic professional skills in the production scenarios, if one takes into account that the RM itself stands out among its main objectives those of developing and consolidating the professional skills of the year that it attends or of the preceding ones, based on the approach of learning by doing.
It also pursues the students' link with the ethics of the labor sector, their traditions and contribute to consolidate the work in the training of students in aspects such as: industriousness, responsibility, discipline, independence and integrate the acquired knowledge into the productive process or the services (Aguilar Hernández and Mena, 2014); (Aguilar Blanco, 2018).
According to the analysis performed, it is considered that, as in pre-professional practices, specific professional skills are addressed during work practice, based on the basic skills with which the student arrives. Only in the former what is pursued is their training and development, instead the latter seek the consolidation, comprehensive application and improvement of professional knowledge and skills previously acquired.
As it can be inferred, to this second modality the student must arrive with the specific professional contents treated in a (predominantly) application level and in it he applies, deepens, consolidates, reinforces and perfects reaching the level of creation or his domain; Mena (2012); Acosta, (2012); Aguilar Hernández and Mena, (2014); Aguilar Blanco, (2018).
As we have seen, although both modalities have similarities, their didactic conception has differences. Pre-professional practices are built on a tutorial teaching, in which students participate independently in the solution of professional problems. Hence the importance of the figure of the traditional tutor of the labor entity, generally intended for the attention of one or two students during an uninterrupted internship period.
Labor practices meanwhile require greater participation (levels of help) of teachers (school teachers and specialists of labor entities) in the process. To some extent, the process exceeds tutorial teaching in the sense that students can also be organized into subgroups or groups. In addition, the school scenarios and their traditional organizational forms are different from those in which there are different jobs for which students must rotate during the activity.
This has caused the model of shared professional training polytechnic school-labor entity (Mena, 2012); recognize the figure of the instructor specialist as a new tutor.
The conduction of the teaching activity in the labor practice requires a new educational figure that, together with the teacher and the tutor is essential in the direction of the teaching-learning process of this modality (Aguilar Blanco, 2018). For this specialist, the structuring of the teaching-learning process of labor practice demands a new look, as new essential relationships arise that start from the demands that the work context makes to the pedagogical process that is intended to be developed in it.
According to Mena (2012), this new look requires recognizing that:
«… Learning in the labor entity is strictly oriented and limited by the logic of productive work or services. The student learns if he joins the process, observing it, helping in the simplest tasks or trying to understand what is happening. The production process should not be altered by students, nor will it slow down or stop for students to complete their learning ». (p.78)
This element must be dominated by teachers, because although the didactic structure of the practical class (Ministry of Education, 2014a) must not be forgotten, it should not be forgotten that it also responds to the laws and principles of the new pedagogical space. The decision to develop the teaching activities of the labor practice in the entities of production and services requires, on the one hand, that the students be integrated in a conscious and organized way, and on the other that they be assimilated in these pedagogical scenarios where they will receive the practical contents that until then received in the workshops, areas and laboratories of the school. All this requires an adequate projection in the organizational, methodological and didactic order of the process, shared between the polytechnic school and the labor entity.
The teaching-learning process and its dynamics during work practice is different from that developed during pre-professional practice. The first must be planned (organized and sequenced), executed (with method), guided (doubly, by the specialist instructor and by the teacher) and evaluated (with criteria predetermined by both). It therefore requires a different methodological teaching strategy. Developing professional training in the conditions of companies with the prominence of their specialists in the teaching activity, requires the preparation of these for the execution of a practical teaching class that, although maintaining its didactic structure, must take into account the characteristics of the New pedagogical scenario.
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Blanco, Jorge Luis Mena Lorenzo