núm. 49 (2006)

This article presents a reflection based on the study carried out to contribute to the construction of a proposal of citizen education which grant a privilege to the development of three dimensions: To build a life project leading to the discovery of human beings’ natural vocation to solidarity and the own people’s dignity with rights and duties. To build the identity and interiority needed to open the psychological processes of commitments, provide elements to deepen human knowledge regarding aspirations and motivations, to show the rigorousness of moral actions, to understand that identity and interiority processes are influenced by the equilibrium and the interaction between personal and social aspects; to understand the meaning of partial elections and particular actions; and finally, to discover the importance of a personal life project leading towards personal and social integration. To make concrete the social commitment as a consequence of the two previous forces, make us worry about the search for more human social and historical structures; that is, the purpose of citizen education: the worry about the other individual in justice.

The interaction teacher–student offers a wide range to investigate about the educator’s speech, bearing in mind that the educator is not only an emissary of knowledge, but he also interacts within the social, erotic-affective and morale dimensions of the students. Therefore, it is necessary that the teacher focuses his performance in the reflection and the commitment to thinking again about his role as educator from the moral perspective; he can be conscious and be responsible for his thematic speech and also for his moral speech. The investigation approaches comprehensively to the reasons emitted by the educators, as moral justifications of their actions, by a descriptive work of hermeneutic type. The resolution of moral dilemmas was utilized for its development, as suitable strategy allowing such approximation. During the period 2005-2006, the information was obtained interviewing the group of participants made by six educators of an educational center of the city of Medellín (Colombia). The theoretical bases of the investigation are supported mainly in Piaget, Kohlberg, Jaramillo and Bermúdez, Gilligan and Habermas. For the content analysis, the main conceptual authors, besides the previous ones, are: Joan-Carles Mèlich and Charles Taylor. The results of this investigation allow understanding some intervention forms of the moral subject and according to them, to propose pedagogical alternatives in order to modify, since the reflection, the meaning of the experience of the educational subject, in such a way that the conception of what is correct and the moral basis can be inferred. Besides, it allows analyzing whether the educators are consequent from their actions with their verbal arguments.

This article is the result of a research based on theoretical principles of Piaget, Kohlberg and Freire, which prove that the personal morality development is a feasible and teleological task. On the other hand, empirical data collected from the Defining Issues Test of James Rest (DIT) shows that the Bogotá’s university students are in the conventional level. This fact challenges us to create a pedagogic proposal where the subject reaches a morality based on principles of social justice and recognition of the others, since the moral consciousness construction is an imperative for Colombian universities, which could be reduced to very technical curricula.

This article presents the experience of La Escuela La Salle para la Paz y la Vida. This is a primary school founded in 2002 by LaSalle Christian Brothers with the purpose of attending a population affected by a political crisis, by an armed conflict and the economical situation of the region. The families displaced by violence and with low economic resources had to take shelter in an invasion neighborhood as an option to find a solution to their housing problem. The school is located in “La Reliquia” neighborhood, belonging to a peripheral area of the city of Villavicencio, Capital of the department of Meta.

The bilateral Free Trade Agreement with the USA includes the so called “Service Sector” which involves aspects related to higher education. This article tries to show the favorable and unfavorable consequences of the four ways to present services known as transfrontier supply, abroad consumption, commercial presence and people movement. This article begins with the analysis of the Agreement relating to public services rendering as it includes education. Then it highlights some aspects related to the Mexican experience after 10 years of the signature of a similar Agreement with the USA. Finally, it includes some pro and against Agreement positions.

Nowadays there is the compelling need of a dialogue among us considered as structures, people, institutions, religions, to agree what kind of world we want to create and what we are going to do to live all of us in the same planet. What does theology have to say about it? What does theology have to tell to itself to make a dialogue feasible? This article studies the theology challenges about this project (a dialogue with contemporary rationalities and with other religions) as well as the assumptions it may have on its basis to participate in the dialogue (theology as pedagogy and communication problem).

This article is part of the final research project “Pedagogic practice, research and teachers’ education” developed during the period 2004-2006 in the Program of BA in Spanish, English and French, in the Education Faculty, at Universidad de LaSalle. It studies three main concepts related to practice, which have been important in the process of teachers’ education. The analysis of rationalities orienting the pedagogic practice in teachers is the basis to explain the ways of organization and its development, the consequences and effects in both educational processes and construction of a teacher as a person with pedagogic knowledge.