Teaching Principles
Adult education seeks to generate learning experiences in which
students are reflective and critical of their constantly changing
context and their place in it. This requires the adoption of methods
that are active, dialogical,
participatory and critical. It also asks us to transcend the
opposition teacher-student by acknowledging that no person educates another person and no
one educates herself, but we all educate each other mediated by the
world.
In order to bring these ideas to the terrain of higher education, I
intend to remain faithful to the following didactic principles:
- my role is to facilitate meaningful
learning;
- I should share with students instead of
indoctrinate them;
- I try to take on only a few concepts and cover
them in-depth;
- I always try to begin with the student
experience or perspectives;
- I should facilitate the integration of what is
learned; and
- I recognize that any pedagogic act is
unpredictable in nature, so I need to remain open to what it generates.
Course design can emphasize contents, outcomes or
process. Depending on the nature and purpose of the class, I emphasize
one or the other, but I always make sure to integrate the three in the
design. I look for a balance
between contents, outcomes and process, by including learning
strategies that facilitate the appropriation of the text, the relation between text and context, and the application of what is learned.
My responsibility
is to design a course that makes it possible for students to use their
experience and interests to critically analyze relevant problems and
thoughtfully grow as human beings. |
Courses Taught
Antropología Médica (Medical
Anthropology) (Universidad del Valle, Guatemala)
2011
Gestión Social para la Salud (Management
of the Social aspects of Health) (Universidad Rafael
Landívar, Guatemala)
2011
ANTH 475: Perspectives in Medical Anthropology
LSJ 322: Human Rights in Latin America
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