La opinión de los docentes universitarios sobre la calidad de la educaciónuna oportunidad para el cambio

Zusammenfassung

On this paper we seek to raise a reflection and a debate on how the quality of education is understood at universities, and its impact on teaching practice. The current speech about the quality of education at universities does not allow teaching practice to affect the transformation of individuals so that they become agents of change, being involved in the exercise of critical comprehension of reality. On the contrary, it favours the contribution to the prevailing model in which knowledge is understood as exchange value on the market. As far as the value of knowledge is reinforced for the competitiveness of companies and countries, students are educated for production and not for personal development. Therefore, the need to define the quality with efficiency criteria is growing at university at the expense of the quality of education understood as a transformation of the individual. The concept of quality currently managed in universities has several consequences. In this occasion we will limit to consider the effect it has on the teaching and learning process: the teaching practice. The structure of this paper will be as follows: First, we will introduce some contrasted visions on the conceptualization of quality in the university, and we will focus on the contribution of Harvey and Green (1993) on the quality of higher education. The concepts presented will serve to lead the discussion of quality in universities and its impact on a decontextualized curriculum. Finally, results of the university teachers' opinion on quality will be presented, in order to produce reflection concerning the opportunity to consider teachers to be agents of social change.