Un estudio sobre cambios planificados en la enseñanza universitaria: origen y desarrollo de las innovaciones educativas

Abstract

The article presents part of the results of a research study whose general objective is to understand, from the instructors' perspective, the dynamics of the processes of change in the development of educational innovation at a university level. The specific objectives are: to interpret how the institutional actors reconstruct innovations from their collective memory to identify phases or distinct moments in the development of innovations to distinguish events, actions, and knowledge constructed during the innovative process that permit explaining the shift from one phase to another and to generate a typology of paths of educational innovations. The study is a multi-case qualitative study: ten experiences of processes of educational innovations that are part of an institutional program of the National University of Río Cuarto named "Innovation and Research Projects for the Improvement of Degree-Oriented Instruction." As a result we have constructed two types of innovation paths that we have termed recursive and incremental. This classification will facilitate understanding the conditions produced by educational changes: recurrence among political decisions and innovation, research, evaluation, instructor training, collaborative work and the effects of emotions.