Participatory practices in the construction of the institutional curriculum. An experience from Popular Education

Abstract

In the educational transformations to the 2030 horizon, one of the central issues is what refers to the curriculum, in particular its construction. In correspondence with this, the Third Improvement of the National Education System of the Republic of Cuba, proposes a new curricular conception that expresses as main characteristics of the curriculum: comprehensive, flexible, contextualized and participatory. The foregoing aims to consider the curriculum as the result of a process of collective elaboration through participatory, horizontal and democratic practices. The objective of the research is to describe an experience of building the institutional curriculum of a junior high school with the participation of the educational community. The process of curricular construction is carried out through a methodology conceived with the participating subjects and which is based on the methodological conception of Popular Education. The research paradigm that is chosen is qualitative, the design that is adopted is research-action-participation. From the experiences lived in the construction of the curriculum, it was found that, to achieve the desired transformation, the subjects must first want to transform themselves; they are not only the protagonists of change, but its main drivers.