Teaching about first period of violence: the political and the epistemic in the practice of social science educators

Abstract

This article poses a problematization and a questioning of the methodological reduction that has been established around the teaching profession, both in the field of teaching social sciences and in the educational environment itself, in which a new generation of university graduates has been trained with referents from discourses about innovation that were part of the education reform of 1994, based more on educators’ use of novel “didactic” tools (video-forums cine-forums, diskforums, workshops and guides), than on actually knowing that discourses are continuously being constructed and resignified and on the political options developed around this knowledge. The discussion presented here proposes to develop a case study within the perspective of analysis of the practice of teaching about the first period of political violence in Colombia, at two levels. The first level corresponds to the epistemic foundations of educators, and the second to their political positioning. The authors consider these levels essential for teaching social sciences and for educators’ practice.