Learnign and teaching

- Instructive objectives:

1. To acquire a view of Learning and Educational Instruction as a teaching space interested by the psychological processes which are involved in the school learning and so by the way in which the processes of teaching help to put in final shape the aforementioned psychological processes.
2. To understand the link between the psychological development and the student education, appreciating the influence which on the person the educational practices which take place at school have.
3. To provide students a theoretical/conceptual scenario which let them analyse and interpret the pocesses of teaching and learning and which is useful as a tool to take decisions about the planning of educational activities.
4. To make easier to students a workable learning of the concepts and the theories which provide explanations about the way students develop a comprehension of school contents and as it is possible, from the educational planning and the development of teaching activities, contribute, favour and promote this cromprehension.
5. To help students to understand and valorize the factors, mechanisms and conditions which favour a comprehensive learning of the school contents

- Formation objectives:

1. That the students develop a critical position about the contribution which psychology offers to the training field for the comprehension of educational school practices.
2. That the students appreciate the value of discussion and the cooperative work as formulas suitable to an authentic significant learning.
3. That the students develop a deep approach of learning and that they are interested in constructing significances and that they acquire learning strategies which enable them for the search , selection and comprehensive organization of the relevant information in this estudio field.
4. That the students develop habits of cooperative group work.
5. That the students develop habits of autonomous independent and self-led work.

1. To learn in the society of information: The instruments of the society of information:Technologies and nets, a new scene for teaching and learning. About the limits of the information exhuberance. Promises and myths of the society of information; society of information is not a society of knowledge. Ways of thinking and acting which are obtained and wasted with the new technologies. The process of making information into knowledge.
2. The problems of comprehension in the classrooms: The difficulties of learning at school: Misunderstandings, wrong conceptions and stereotypes on school learning. The deficiencies in learning: The weak knowledge and the poor knowledge. The causes of deficiencies in the comprehension. From the psychological limits to the institutional limits, with a special reference to the implicit conceptions of teachers about learning.
3. Learning to understan: The construction of the comprehension in the classroom and the significant learning: The nature of comprehension. The way the students learn to understand add the way they express the comprehension. The atribution of significance and the conditions of significant learning; the disciplinar structure, the psychological relevance and the students´ will to learn. A proposal of teaching for the comprehension.
4. Significant learning of school contents and the development of capacities: The verbal and conceptual learning: From the mechanic learning to the learning of significances. The learning of procedures: To learn procedures or how to learn to use the knowledge. Towards a categorization of procedural contents. The attitude learning. The values and rules as educational contents. Formation of attitudes and values in the classroom. Capacities or competences? A dilema innocent at all. A critical look to the logic of competences

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- Generic Competences

1. Capacity to solve problems
2. Capacity of searching, selection, analysis, and comprehensive treatment of the information.
3. Capacity for cooperative work
4. Capacity for verbal and written expression to communicate with coherence our own thoughts.
5. Capacity to use the technological tools (virtual context of leaning and data-bank base) as instruments for organization and development of the contents of the subject and for the communication.

- Specific competences

1. Capacity to understand and analyse the way in how the scholar educative practices promote and facilitate the students’´ learning process.
2. Capacity to understand the new context where the characteristical devices in the informative society and the operation in web of the electronic technologies make their influence on Scholar Education in general, and for the processes of teaching-learning particularly.
3. Capacity to identify the limits and the obstructions, both personal and institutional, that block learning properly meaningful.
4. Acquisition of a functional learning of the concepts and the theories that offer explanations about how pupils develop the comprehension of the scholar contents and how is possible, from the didactic planning and the development of the activities, help and promote that comprehension.

The main activity that gives sense to the organization and dynamism to the course, is the elaboration of a synthesis report (no more than 10 pages) where are articulated the contents worked about the bases named before by students in a comprehensively way.

The synthesis report will ask the question which is done on the Introduction of the extended program (http://firgoa.usc.es/moodle) which is announced here in the final observations.

The nuclear dynamism is the seminary- course which requires permanent groups between 4-6 members. Theses members should work collaboratively for the elaboration of the synthesis report, using the habitual procedures of the intellectual work: elaboration of a file-folder, with summary cads, conceptual cards which will help to form the schema of the synthesis they have to write as an essay.

The mentioned model of seminary-course will have a cyclic structure formed by:

1. The work in each block begins with an explanation that clarifies issues, where the teacher presents an integrate point of view of the items and the most relevant conceptual proposals in the texts.
2. From here and in the number of sessions which will be determinated, the teams will develop a critical reflection in a cooperative form and a discussion about the documents and they will organize the work to make the summary cads, the conceptual cards which will help to form the schema of the synthesis they have to write as an essay.
3. The work will finish with a discussion in big–group. That discussion must be prepared by each team previously, choosing the items they consider relevant for the discussion in big group.

In the course of the working in small teams, the function of the teacher will be to assist / guide that work which is done in the classroom by the small teams.

According with the organization and dynamism of the course we have mentioned in the paragraph about methodology, they are predicted four instruments of evaluation:

1.The Essay: the synthesis report.
2.The documental data- bank. The summary cads, the conceptual cards, conceptual maps, schemas.
3.A followed observation of the activity developed by the groups and the individual participation on the session of discussion.
4.Auto evaluation realized by the small-team.

1.Expositive classes and interactive classes (work in small teams and discussions in big group): 25 hours
2.Individual reading and elaboration of summary and conceptual worksheets: 25 hours.
3.Meet ups of the small groups to elaborate de synthesis report: 30 hours

About the presence in the programmed sessions:

It is indispensable the presence in the sessions on the program of the subject due to the characteristics of the planning of the course we have explained in paragraphs before.

To guarantee the appropriated functionality of the groups (it is necessary the active compromise of the members), it is established as a condition the 80 % of the presence on the sessions which will be programmed.

To participate in the small groups and on the debates, it is necessary the reading of the documents according with the sequence established on the extended program of the subject.

Recognizing the unique nature of the human being, the starting point of this subject is that the Education is a device though generation though generation it is transferred to the next one the knowledge, skills, capacities which will allow to their members a functional adaptation to the culture they belong to.

In the named ´primitive societies´ that cultural transferring takes places on a simple way. It is enough to learn the observation (without words, or hardly without words) of the immediate actions of the adults who develop them.

In the case of complex societies, the culture brings the knowledge and the technics that overcome the things that an adult of a community knows. Is this the reason why it is necessary the school as an specialized institution to educate, to transfer the culture, through the language fundamentally, and therefore out of the context of adult activities. This new frame to educate makes difficult the acts for learning and teaching, reason why we need to think about the instructional process, why we need theories and instructional technics which allow the teachers to learn the best way to promote the learning and the development of the students.

In the line of this formulation, we invite the students to answer the next question: In the historical-cultural context where we live, where predominate the techniques about the production and the transferring of information, which theory (or theories) of the instruction and which tools coming from that theory (or theories) provide us the most appropriated mechanisms with the intention that schools and their teachers will help through the educative action to create and amplify various human capacities in their pupils?

(A extended version of this program is available on the “System of Management of the Learning / Sistema de Gestión del Aprendizaje) Moodle, which is used as a frame of this subject for the ordinary work of our pupils at University (USC): http://firgoa.usc.es/moodle).