Geograficando (Jun 2014)
The teaching of Social Sciences in the primary school teaching courses of study of the province of Buenos Aires. The case of Geography and its great absence. Analysis of the situation and one ground-breaking contribution
Abstract
Alejandro Kaufman (2008) points out that great changes are taking place from a cultural-historical perspective in the education-society relation and that many of the tensions between these two fields are the result of what he calls cultural “novelties”. He claims that education has been grounded on some sort of predictability and on the fact that - since modernity represents progress, which would be related to many of these certainties disappearance or transformation – the school could be enduring certain changes which involve this institution’s very foundations. Future teachers’ education in the field of Social Sciences needs to be adjusted to the requirements of this new society. Social Sciences Didactics must then choose an approach which takes into consideration new epistemological perspectives and relevant topics within its pedagogical proposals. Geography is indeed part of the curriculum in the teaching courses of study, which in turn include copious instructions as to how to deal with such content in First and Second cycle curriculum design, but it is also paramount that the development of such content be verified from a critical perspective which may enable both teachers and students to make a commitment to the world in which the school is inserted.
