Recovering the meaning of activities: reflections on the importance of didactic design

Abstract

All the weight of the curriculum is ultimately embodied in the activities that students carry out in their classroom with their teacher at school. In a way, this is what students "consume" from the curriculum (SALINAS, 2001; ALCARAZ SALARIRCHE; FERNÁNDEZ NAVAS; PÉREZ GRANADOS, 2019). It is therefore crucial how and on the basis of what criteria educators design these activities. The initial training of future teachers should be aimed at building solid criteria based on theoretical knowledge that will help them to make decisions in the classroom in a practical way. But with the added difficulty that it is not enough to change only at the level of proclaimed theories (PÉREZ GÓMEZ, 2019) but that the theories in use must also be reconstructed. In this sense, the issue of isomorphism is particularly relevant (GIMENO; FERNÁNDEZ, 1980; CLARK; MCNERGNEY, 1990; SOLA 1999). In this article we analyse what are our professional criteria, as well as our didactic design to favour the training of our educational studies students as reflective practitioners (SCHÖN, 1987). Questions about how we create the most suitable conditions for learning to be enhanced in our subjects, how we promote the integration of theory and practice by our students, how we offer them scaffolding, what are the central tasks in this sense in our subject, how we promote relevant learning (PÉREZ GÓMEZ, 1998) in our students, etc. are the subject of analysis in this article.  They are the subject of analysis in this article.