Citizenship education
Learning at school and in society

Full Time Schools: Workshop Projects

Uruguay

The Uruguayan authorities have had the objective of implementing a new pedagogical and institutional model in the Full Time School. Thus, they have started implementing projects, in the workshop modality, in the areas of language and social and natural sciences, which have ended in the publication of books. The innovation of this proposal, consisting of the renewal of a part of the content taught in the Full Time Schools, is the participation of actors, families, teachers and children of the different school levels involved in change. In this way, the verticality associated to curricular change decisions is broken. Besides, the children's participation increases their school success.

In order to develop the change of contents in schools, teachers participate in two training stages. The first one, containing 150 hours, is carried out in an internship modality in different occasions during the year. The second part has the aim of developing language project, social or natural sciences (in workshop modality). Teachers work simultaneously with students groups (who are not in their daily classes) during the workshops. Children have the opportunity of going through all the projects in the year. Finally, every program ends in a final product (theatrical play, publication, exhibit, etc.). The proposal lies on a strong conceptual basis, ranging from the disciplines involved (linguistics, natural and social sciences) which includes the systematic follow-up and register of the change processes, both at a conceptual level as well as procedural and attitudinal. Examples of projects carried out in 1999 and 2000 are: Language: "Theatrical Play", "School Newspaper", "Creation of a collective tale"; Social Sciences: "How are news made on television?" Families", "A foreigner visits the school"; Natural Sciences: "Life, a different approach: To grow", "The challenge of producing jam", "Chemistry everywhere: getting is not always manufacturing", etc.
Finally, the work in projects has some important characteristics:
1. Any activity must fall within a certain context, so that it does not lose its meaning for the students,
2. Every student must participate in the activities and tasks,
3. Working schedules are collectively organized,
4. The work atmosphere is based on trust, reliability and respect, which allow the child to be creative,
5. Language has a great importance as a mediator between experience and knowledge, and their shared cultural meanings. Until now, 481 teachers have approved the first stage and 276 teachers have taken workshops in the three areas. In 2001, 367 teachers of 68 full-scheduled schools are doing the experience.

The Full Time School is thought of as a strategy to meet basically the educational needs of the students belonging to unfavored social and cultural contexts. It is a singular educational offer within the educational system in Uruguay and its singularity goes beyond the daily schedule extension, covering a wide range of educational situations and experiences. Among these we can find the workshop modality Projects, as a response to the school population's characteristics and needs to which it is aimed. The Full Time School can contribute to compensate the differences, promoting actions in accordance with the positive discrimination criterion. In such schools, the workshop experience is important since it stresses individual responsibility and teacher-student relationship based on the carrying out of a common task.

Ms. Marina OROZCO
Full Time School
National Administration of Public Educatio n
Central Leading Council
MECAEP PROJECT
ANEF/BIRF
882 Independencia Square, 11th Floor
Montevideo, Uruguay CP 11 100
Tel.: (598 2) 900 3104

Institutional Partners
Ministry of Education, Uruguay

Projects are the result of the teaching training activities carried out since 1998.

Three books: Language Projects in Full Time Schools, Social Sciences Projects in Full Time Schools and Natural Sciences Projects in Full Time Schools, M. Orozco and E. Davyt, National Administration of Public Education, Republic of Uruguay, 2001. Reference document: OROZCO M. AND FRANCIA M.T. Pedagogic Proposals for the Full Time School, CODICEN/FAS/MECAEP, Nov. 1997