Estrategias de Aprendizaje PDF

# Estrategias de Aprendizaje ## Presentación - The educational process of repeating knowledge, or learning without understanding (rote learning), and mechanically reproducing the knowledge taught and learned, can be overcome by applying interactive methodologies. - Interactive methodologies are t...

# Estrategias de Aprendizaje ## Presentación - The educational process of repeating knowledge, or learning without understanding (rote learning), and mechanically reproducing the knowledge taught and learned, can be overcome by applying interactive methodologies. - Interactive methodologies are tools for intellectual construction that induce the teacher and the student to mobilize and develop their cognitive or intellectual functions. This process occurs when the subject reorders or reconfigures the knowledge they manage, with interaction between the subject and the knowledge. Under these conditions of intellectual processing of knowledge, meaningful and comprehensive learning is possible. - In traditional teaching-learning processes, the student remains passive, not interacting with the knowledge. They are limited to memorizing without understanding, a condition that limits the development of their intellectual skills. This situation not only affects the student's learning, because they repeat knowledge without understanding it, but also affects the person responsible for transmitting it - in a mechanical way - the teacher who repeats and imitates the knowledge they transmit. It also affects the development of the knowledge itself, which is not transformed to generate science and technology. - Knowledge in the teaching-learning process should have a double meaning: one of an academic-scientific nature and another as the resource that promotes the development of the intellectual abilities of those who manage it (teacher and student). - Those who teach using traditional methods, keeping the student intellectually passive, even when using multimedia equipment or computerized means, are not only transmitting mechanical knowledge, but they are also contributing - from their position as a teacher - to consolidate structural dependence and linear-imitative thinking. This becomes an educational blockage to the meaning that knowledge has as a strategic resource for the development of society. For this reason it is argued that education is the key to development, but not the traditional education that continues to manage knowledge through the transmission-repetition model. - This book aims to contribute to overcoming the traditional model of managing knowledge under memorizing-imitative conditions. For this, it proposes the construction of interactive methodologies as intellectual tools for the subject to interact with knowledge, turning it into a strategic resource in its double significance, the academic-scientific and for the development of the subject's intellectual abilities. ## Chapter 1: Considerations General about Methodology - **Objectives:** - Understand the concept of methodology and its significance in the learning process and in scientific research, that is, in the management of knowledge. - Recognize the characteristics, conditions, and applications of methodology as a tool for intervening in the systematic and constructive management of knowledge or reality. - Establish interdependence between the way of thinking and the use of methodology to interpret reality and/or to manage knowledge. - Determine the significance of methodology as a resource for interacting with knowledge during the teaching and learning processes. - **Content:** - **1. Considerations General about Methodology:** Applications of methodology for comprehensive learning and for scientific research. - **1.1. Methodology.** Concept. Characteristics, and functions of Methodology. - **1.2. Methodology as a resource for interacting with knowledge.** - **1.3. The significance of methodology in knowledge management.** - **1.4. The application of methodology depends on the subject's way of thinking.** - **1.5. Communicative Interaction and Learning** - **1.6. The Nature of Knowledge and Methodology.** ### 1.1. Methodology - concept, characteristics, and functions - Methodology is the study of methods. "Methodology is the description, analysis, and critical evaluation of research methods."¹ Methodology enables the creation of logical procedures for analyzing, interpreting, understanding, and transforming reality. - The method is a set of procedures that organize an activity systematically, starting from reordering or reconfiguring an existing reality, in order to interpret it, understand it, and/or transform it, in order to achieve a goal. - The term method comes from the Greek words *met-a* meaning with and *odos*, meaning path; that is, a process aimed at and systematized according to the object of study, to the real situation that is intervened in, a process that depends on the subject's abilities and their critical-creative attitude. - While the *method* is the strategy, the *technique* is the tactic. The method is the set of procedures, it is the tool built by the subject to carry out analysis, comprehension, and intervention of what is intended to know and/or transform. The technique is the tactic, the art of using the tool, the way of applying the procedures to use knowledge. - The method, as a tool that is being built, depends on the subject's abilities, the elements that make up the problem under study, and the formulation of the objectives. Once the *why* and *for what* is investigated is established, it becomes more understandable *how* to investigate or study, since the method is defined as the construction of procedures to achieve a goal. - The method is a resource for intervening systematically in reality. When the method is built as a strategy for interaction, it facilitates comprehensive knowledge acquisition (study-learning) and when it is elaborated as a critical-creative tool, it facilitates the production of new knowledge (research). Therefore, the method is a tool for conducting scientific research and for studying-learning. - For scientific research, the method is applied in the organization and development of the *research process*, and for the learning process, through the construction of *learning strategies*. - The method has a dialectical character when it is used to: interpret contradictions, inter causal relationships, system analysis, and transformation of reality. - The method is an intangible tool that becomes tangible as it is built based on the nature of the problem or object of study, and the critical-creative ability that the subject assumes in the face of reality. - The method organizes the diverse activities of the person, helps them to develop their life plan. The method is necessary but not indispensable: it facilitates human work, contributes to the planning and organization of activities. - In the process of studying the construction of methodologies as strategies for interacting with knowledge, it promotes the mobilization and development of intellectual abilities. The method does not work automatically and does not replace intelligence, the method is the construction of logical procedures carried out by the subject; hence, the efficiency of the method is directly proportional to the creative ability of the user. - The research methodology is a tool with which the understanding and explanation of reality is facilitated. Methodology is a resource that helps with the ability of human beings to interpret and transform reality, driving scientific-technological development, social, political changes, organizing socio-cultural well-being. - Methodology in relation to knowledge, has at least three basic meanings: - For the study of ontological, logical, epistemological, semantic, paradigmatic assumptions that underlie the formulation of procedures and processes that order an activity, support a theory or a model of knowledge. - Another meaning refers to the elaboration and application of methods and techniques to build new knowledge from existing ones, that is, to conduct scientific research. - Another meaning of methodology includes the set of procedures that organize and develop educational activities, whether for teaching (didactics) or for learning (learning strategies). - In the first two meanings or ways of application, methodology is a logical resource for the construction of knowledge, that is, for conducting scientific research; while in the third meaning, methodology is a logical resource that is applied in the educational process, where it becomes the tool that facilitates the organization of knowledge to be taught or learned. - In the educational process, methodology is one more component that can be used interactively or passively. When it is used interactively, it is a resource that facilitates the mobilization of intellectual functions, a condition that promotes intellectual development, critical-creative ability, and comprehension of knowledge. On the other hand, if it is used mechanically or passively, methodology only serves to transmit knowledge (teaching) or to repeat without understanding (learning), activities in which the use of one of the intellectual functions predominates - memorization without comprehension and with limitations to intellectual development. - With the methodology, procedures are organized for descriptive, analytical, and explanatory purposes to interpret reality and/or to understand knowledge, processes that depend on: the subject's capacity, the nature of the object under study, and the objectives to be achieved. - The organization of methods and techniques develop logical processes, forms of reasoning, and systematizations of activities, resources, and knowledge. Processes that must be differentiated from the cognitive content that is being processed and with which methodology has functional interdependence. Methodological procedures organize knowledge, but they are not knowledge itself, and since they are logical resources that are applied in knowledge management, they can mobilize intellectual functions, a condition that depends on how methodology is used and what the significance of knowledge is for the subject who processes it, whether to teach, learn, or investigate. ### 1.2. Methodology as a resource for interacting with knowledge or reality - Methodology, since it was built by the student becomes a resource for interacting with knowledge, which implies the use, mobilization of different capacities or intellectual functions under these conditions, the double meaning that the management of knowledge should have when studying: comprehensive or meaningful learning, and the development of intellectual abilities. Neither of these processes occurs when the student remains passive, receiving the transmission of knowledge, even with the use of multimedia or computer-based tools, when they read and repeat mechanically and rote. The student, not interacting with knowledge, does not develop comprehension or their intellectual abilities. - In the interaction student-knowledge, comprehensive learning refers to the reasoned appropriation of knowledge with recognition of the meaning of each concept, relating and differentiating the different elements that are studied, valuing their probable uses and applications through the analysis of their components and, if possible, explaining their causality. Understanding comes from the intellectual processing of the knowledge that is being studied. - Intellectual development includes the set of abilities or functions that organize intelligence, constituting the ability to reason or think to interpret facts, knowledge, or to solve problems or transform situations. - Methodology as a resource or tool for interrelating with reality and/or with knowledge, has two alternative uses by the subject or student: - As a mechanical and reductionist resource applied to reproduce knowledge, the object, or reality, and as a processing and reconfiguring resource, to complexify and interact with knowledge or reality, generated from the use of the different intellectual abilities of the subject. In both cases, the use, application of methodology will be totally different. - In the subject-methodology-knowledge or reality relationship, it is essential to recognize and control what F. Pardinas called "sociocultural influences." These influences can affect the subject. - The methodology as an organizer of knowledge, is managed or built by the subject through the following algorithm: - **Every Knowledge Management** - **is organized with** - **a logic** - (way of thinking) - **the content** - (form of thinking) - **a structured process** - (with or without methodologies) - With methodology, the subject organizes logical processes for managing knowledge, whether in teaching-learning processes or in scientific research processes, in which they are interrelated: a logic of reasoning or form of interpretation, the content constituted by theories, models, concepts, knowledge, which are integrated by causal, functional relationships, structuring a process that is organized through methodology. - Understanding logic refers to the discipline that studies forms of thought, whether they are coherent or not, whether they are mechanical or reflective, each subject's reasoning has its own logic. Logic understands *how* to do, *how* to organize a sequence of elements to achieve a goal, *how* to reason about a subject to interpret it. Each subject manages "their logic" of interpreting reality or the knowledge they manage. -"Logic studies the conditions under which truth is transported from one statement to another, applying reasoning or inductive, deductive, analogical, systemic, hermeneutical methods...”2 - Methodology as a formalization logic resource participates in every knowledge management, promoting "hermeneutical comprehension" (refers to the interpretation of the text or object in its context). ### 1.3. The significance of methodology in the management of knowledge - For the purpose of understanding the significance of methodology in knowledge management (when studying or researching), it is necessary to recognize some basic assumptions: - Methodology is not a recipe for procedures that simply apply them to obtain spectacular products or incredible goals. On the contrary, methodology is a resource that the subject builds and therefore, will depend on the intellectual ability of the person who builds it for it to be effective and productive. - There is no single methodology that serves uniformly for different processes. Methodology has a situational character, it is built according to the needs and nature of the object or the problem. The efficiency of methodology lies in its dialectical and strategic property. Methodology is related but not determined by the setting in which it intervenes, the object should not drag “its” methodology, on the contrary, methodology should be creative and transformative of the object or the process in which the subject intervenes. - The method is a resource that is built systematically and simultaneously during the interpretation and intervention of the object or reality. - The construction and application of a transformative and critical methodology is the product of the intellectual capacity of the subject who generates it from divergent, dialectical, complex, lateral, reordering, and strategic thinking. The lack of critical-creative thinking and the adherence to traditional and conservative thought affect the quality of methodology and reduce its significance to a pre-established and immutable procedure to reproduce activities and knowledge without understanding them. - The quality and productivity of methodology is proportional to the operator's capabilities and the setting in which it is applied. The operator is conditioned by their intellectual development, their conception of reality or ideological position, and the availability of information. While the setting is determined by the socio-cultural, institutional context, and the epistemic model that hegemonizes academic and scientific work in that particular social medium. - Methodology as an intellectual tool is directly related to how knowledge is managed (whether in the educational or research process) and to the *why* of the knowledge object management, whether it is to reproduce, reconfigure, or to transform the object. - Methodology is the logical procedure for systematizing knowledge, it is not the knowledge that is managed when studying or researching. - It is necessary to differentiate the applications of methodology in every knowledge management, recognizing two groups of applications: - In the educational context, three moments of applying methodology are generated: 1. How the teacher interprets knowledge for its teachability; 2. How the teacher teaches that interpreted knowledge; 3. How the student appropriates the taught knowledge. In this third moment, methodology must be applied as a Learning Strategy, if any interactive approach is to be followed that is different from repetition or from the imitative management of knowledge. - The second group of methodologies refers to those used in the scientific research process; that is, for the production of knowledge different from those in existence, a process that begins by questioning, problematizing what exists to achieve transformation by formulating a new explanation. - Scientific research should not be confused with gathering bibliographical information, demonstrating what has already been explained, or copying existing knowledge. Conducting scientific research means seeking explanations for a problem, designing a theoretical model, and testing it to reconfigure and transform reality (processes that are built using methodology and generating new explanations and new knowledge, which will be developed in Chapter 5). ### 1.4. The application of methodology depends on the subject's way of thinking - The way of thinking, of interpreting reality conditions the way of using the method or of valuing its significance for managing knowledge or for understanding reality; that is, a traditional, reductionist, and conservative way of thinking will correspond to a mechanical and linear use of methodology, being applied to reproduce or imitate knowledge or reality. On the contrary, a critical and reflective way of thinking, will manage methodology as a resource that is built by interacting, reconfiguring, and processing reality or knowledge. - To study, it is not enough to have the opportunity, the intellectual capacity, the will, and the material resources needed, but it is also fundamental to know how to do it, that is, how to intellectually process the knowledge you want to learn; how to interpret, how to analyze, how to explain, and how to comprehend the knowledge that is being studied, constitutes a process that is conditioned by the meaning that the subject gives to the methodology of learning, also known as the learning strategy. - To investigate, it is also necessary to know how to do it and to understand that research is a process that is built to produce new knowledge with the objective of transforming the reality that is being problematized, a critical-creative process that is organized with the methodology of scientific research. - The significance with which methodology is used is directly related to the conception that each person has for managing knowledge. It is generally stated that a subject has two alternatives for managing knowledge, which will depend on their way of thinking: - For those who believe that scientific knowledge is already defined and exists statically in reality, and there is only to discover it with the appropriate method. Being its passive and mechanical appropriation, in a receptive-imitative way, for this purpose, the study is used to reproduce or repeat knowledge, using memorized procedures. This way of conservative and traditional thinking uses the method to imitate existing knowledge, under the criterion that it is immutable, definitive, and does not transform. - The teachings that are transmitted in a mechanical way, and the learning that is carried out by reading and repeating, in order to take exams with questions to answer with knowledge learned in a way that is imitative and rote, represent this conservative, lacking in understanding, and backward way of thinking. - When it is recognized that scientific knowledge is a product of constant dynamism and construction, and that it is a strategic resource for transforming reality and the development of society; that is, knowledge has a productive meaning according to the ability of the subjects who manage it. With this interactive way of thinking, the appropriation of knowledge will be reflexive, in a critical-creative way, building methodologies to interact with knowledge, to reconfigure, and to understand it when studying, and to transform it when researching. - Under these conditions, the method is not applied rigidly to reproduce the logical sequence of knowledge, but is built to reconfigure and to seek other interpretations, problematizing it, from the perspective of understanding it (when studying) or transforming it (when researching), according to the needs of the social environment. ### 1.5. Communicative Interaction and Learning - The communicative process in teaching-learning is organized with the interaction of three components, according to the following table. | CONTENT | PROCEDURE | APTITUDE | |---|---|---| | Knowledge | Method of presentation| Capacity to act | | Concepts | Manner of Communicating| Positive Disposition | | Theory | way of Organizing | Interest to Analyze | | Models | Type of Methodology | Search for relationships and uses | | Formulas | Performs: Demonstrations, Applications, Inferences | Motivation to Search: Interpretations, Causes, Different Explanations | | Diagrams | Provides Explanations| Indifference, Passivity | | | Only Projects and Reads | | - Procedures constitute the diverse communicative strategies used to decipher messages, present, demonstrate how content or knowledge is organized. Content refers to the knowledge that is taught for learning. The third column, aptitudes, encompasses the way subjects are disposed to face the knowledge, the discourse, reality, the behavior that is assumed before opinions, underlying principles, and the norms that are related to the act of communicating. - Both procedures and aptitudes can be passive or interactive, which depends on the individual’s way of being and thinking, and the meaning they give to knowledge. - A communication process involves a constant interaction between the participants and the content, which will depend on the type of procedure that is applied and the aptitudes that the participants assume. During the interaction process, the participants should be active interlocutors, participating in communication with a reflective, analytical and explanatory attitude, to generate a communicative process of horizontal relationship. Otherwise, only a process of information will occur, which transmits knowledge mechanically, without achieving its comprehension, establishing a vertical and unidirectional relationship. - A similar interaction should occur when studying any text, establishing communication between the text and the reader with feedback and the reconfiguration of knowledge (using strategies), organizing a process in which the student interacts with knowledge. ### 1.6. The Nature of Knowledge and Methodology - The nature of knowledge and methodology refers to the conditions in which it is organized, constituted, and managed, and the way in which methodology is applied in those conditions. - The nature of knowledge and methodology do not have a universal character like science or technology. They are context-specific and have historical and social legitimacy for that setting. - The nature of knowledge and methodology have legitimacy in institutional settings, especially in education. Its condition is homeostatic and grants them the credentials for reproduction through social practices and professions. - *"This type of knowledge is the one that the individual learns through socialization and mediates the internalization of the objective structures of the social world within their way of being. This type of knowledge is the structural basis with which that social environment functions. Knowledge that is a realization in the double sense of the word: as an apprehension of objective social reality and as a continuous reproduction of reality."*3 - Knowledge is conceptualized as a product of intellectual processing of reality, which is organized with the meanings, conceptual representations, interpretations, and cognitive comprehension resulting from the mental operations of relating, differentiating, selecting, inferring, analyzing, explaining, making applications, comparisons… processes that can be complex to reconfigure existing knowledge or simple to reproduce existing knowledge. - It is the logical representation that the subject builds when relating to reality. A relationship that becomes a process throughout the individual’s existence, transcending, accumulating in society as a set of socio-cultural knowledge and as scientific-technological knowledge. Sets of knowledge that are transmitted and used through different social practices, which configure settings where individuals interact and coexist. - Each individual, at birth, is assimilated, becoming part of a socio-cultural context, in which they are socialized with and within values, social practices, and knowledge that are current and functional in that particular context. - Education fulfills the function of socializing the individual, systematizing the learning of knowledge that is current, organizing activities to *develop* their personal and social abilities, their way of thinking and understanding knowledge and its applicability. In our environment, this educational process is organized with a traditional model that manages knowledge through transmission-repetition, which determines psycho-pedagogical and social consequences for both individuals and Bolivian society, that is, the educational consequences of a society which has a limited knowledge-based education and a rote-based pedagogy. - The management of knowledge in memorizing conditions, with conceptual poverty and the denaturalization of the attributes of knowledge, induces to formulate some questions, such as: - What is the significance of knowledge when it is handled through transmission-repetition? - Is the meaning of knowledge as a strategic resource for development understood? - Does traditional education recognize the nature and attributes of knowledge, as well as the meaning of methodology in the learning-study process and for conducting research? - Does traditional education have the conditions to develop professional training with academic-social relevance to meet regional and national needs or simply imitates under the discourse of modernization? - Possible answers should be the subject of critical reflection to reorient educational work in our medium. - When knowledge is managed in a traditional model, it is difficult to understand, and it lacks critical thinking. There are many shortcomings in the way that knowledge is understood and managed, such as: - The lack of critical thinking. - The lack of creative thought processes to find new solutions. - The inability to critically analyze and re-evaluate information, which hinders the ability to interpret reality accurately.