Workplaces in Colombia and Vocational Education in
your country.
I would
like to start this
reflection with these statements:
“Education is the master key to innovate, grow and to give equal opportunities
to all “.
Everybody
Knows this, however, in Colombia
“ this Education” comes to few
people, those who have the
economical capacity to pay the right to get it.
Only the Sena as
a public Institution meets
the requirements for those
people who does not have that
capacity because it is free.
Sena tries all the time
to update, to innovate
, to improve the
quality of its
education not only for
its students but of
its instructors too.
Now, Talking
about vocational Education in Colombia I can see
many contradictions ,taking into account
the first reading about
the new leaders and the
strategies and politics
that Colombia is considering
to be in
this process of having
those kind of
leaders, we realize that Technical
schools, Sena and universities in charge
of this
work, have to make deep changes.
First, they should update curriculums and programs to make
the students to have not
only technical knowledge, skills and qualities but also
values and principles to
face new challenges
successfully.
We as Sena
Instructors, see how our
students get a very good level
of Technical Knowledge and Skills to
work in their areas
of study, but their behaviorism
in places of
working are not the
best. They give up easily
when they find a
big problem to
solve, Most of them have
problems to fulfill schedules, to
be on time, to interact
with others, to be responsible.
However, when they
have to develop a project, they
get excellent results. Then; to get
those new leaders
How we improve
in our students to have deep integrity and intellectual
openness, or to find new ways to create
loyalty, to teach them how to
work in a team is necessary
to create a new
culture in the classrooms.
Now, if we want to
have leaders, the leadership of principals and teachers is a determining
factor in the quality of education, so
we must start doing the
things very well by ourselves.
We design the culture of leadership in a learning
environment and we determine which faculty, course or group of students should be related to this
platform.
It is also needed the organizational culture, to give
managers more time to think about the big picture of what the institutions have
to do.
In our society we need good leaders and globally we
have a deficit of leadership. So the questions should be: how can we get good leaders? and how is it possible
that in a society of seven billion human beings we have
a difficulty finding them? That's where education start its
real work.
*****
Other aspects to consider
at macro level is
that In Latin America there is little long-term planning to define the
number and quality of Teachers at each grade level, the number of technicians
and people with graduate degrees would be required form, curriculum content and cultivating
essential values in a changing world.
The role play technology, the content should be given
priority to train and promote happiness in a changing world, the role of memory
when all available knowledge and ways to improve cognitive skills are some of
the issues tracking. At Sena, we are
trying to develop new digital
citizens and students against of
their awareness of bad use of
technology.
The role play technology, the content that should be
given priority to train and promote happiness in a changing world.
The subject that you teach
Nowadays, English is a subject that is covering a high
importance and the government center its efforts is English language
acquisition. As many countries, Colombia
is targeted national educational agendas focuses on the attainment of
competitiveness in this globalized world.
A world that changes with the years and within the language, in this
case with teaching and learning English occur the same thing. Graddol (2006) explores these changes through
the analysis of factors that influence in language learning process and how they
impact in the vision of world and English language as a bridge of connection
between all social spheres. One of
teaching and learning language goal from government policy is that everyone,
students, teachers, professionals should be competent speakers of English and
have the skills in the use of ICT’s as a part of our curricula, but world-wide
performance in language by students in Colombia, especially from some public
schools is poor.
According to the results about National English test, the MEN has found
that teachers in Colombia are limited to make their labor as ELT should be, the
government based on national tests results affirms that teachers are not
qualified. Since the application of
evaluation to teachers and students, these tests only have been used to show
what they know about the language and the results are used as a tool to
evaluate teacher’s development (Decreto 1278, 2002). Even so, in public schools is notorious to
find creative, hunger teachers to find better ways to teach English in a communicative
way. Hence, to study other curriculums
from other countries, especially from countries where the English has another
position inside the educational system can give us idea in how to apply this
methodology, materials in our Colombian public schools contexts. Teachers and especially teachers
administrators need to understand the principles of CLT. These principles involve the goals of
language to teach and to learn, the ways learners learn languages, the kind of
classroom activities, the role of teacher and the role of student to at the end
of the course students are more capable subjects to communicate with others in
English, obtaining at least B1 (CEFR, 2006).
The future of English in Colombia is focus in how the
government is centered on the preparation from universities to future teachers,
but it would be better that such training was initiated at the Escuelas
normales where it would actually initiating process of bilingualism at an early
age with the educational practices of these pre-service teachers. On the other hand, some aspects that
influence in the successful of this global language is that in public schools
this signature is taught in three hours per week, teachers use in creative way
all the materials that the school environment gives him/her, and all sources
that learner use to self-internalization of the language, overcrowded classroom
affect not only teachers health, relations between students and teachers, and
teachers with other peers.
In
conclusion, it could be interesting if the government (MEN and SENA )reorganize their trends related with
the Bilingual Program according to the school context, to give the teaching
labor the place what is and the government could offer to teachers better
opportunities to improve their salary level and health conditions, and in this
way they are interested to update their English level, because it results very
expensive to pay for specializations, masters or PhD.
