“El éxito escolar no se traduce en respuestas correctas en un examen, sino en la comprensión del alumno”
"School success does not translate into correct answers on a test, but in the understanding of student"
An expert defends at the University of Navarra a Education that helps students to "solve the real problems of life".
"School success does not translate into correct answers on an exam, but in the understanding of student". This was stated today at the University of Navarra by Javier Bahón, director of the New Educational Keys Foundation, during the XXXIX seminar of Educational Centers organized by department of Education.
The expert pointed out that "currently, in many cases, the most that students have access to is to memorize all the subjects that make up the official curriculum , remember them for a while and forget them, without any change in their way of understanding life". He added: "We teachers are subordinated to a series of stereotypes that we believe are obligatory, such as covering all the contents of a textbook; and this has to change".
In this line, he emphasized the idea that academic subjects should serve to solve the real problems of life, "to be a qualified person staff and professionally". "The basis of educating for understanding is that, that everything we do leaves you impregnated so that later, in life, you can use it," he asserted.
He also indicated that teaching for understanding consists of giving the students the leading role and that they are the ones who get to know the reason for things. For example, one of the ways to measure whether a topic has been understood, he said, is "to get the student to be able to explain it to others".
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The XXXIX edition of the seminar of Educational Centers of the University of Navarra, which ends today, delves into the theory of Multiple Intelligences, a proposal of the American psychologist and Harvard professor Howard Gardner, which questions the Education currently taught, based on two types of intelligence - linguistic and logical-mathematical - out of the nine we have - also musical, spatial, kinesthetic-bodily, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and spiritual.
Based on this vision, Gardner, together with Perkins, Perrone, Wiske Stone and other collaborators, founded, at Harvard University, the project Zero, which promotes the approach called "teaching for understanding".
Patricia León, instructor of the WIDE World program at Harvard University, also participated in the seminar and presented through a workshop the framework of the teaching for comprehension.
Around 85 people signed up for the conference, coordinated by Maica González Torres and Sonia Lara, professors at department of Education of the University of Navarra.