La enseñanza y su relación con el saber en los estudiantes universitarios colombianos

Abstract

This article presents the results of an investigation into student responses to the demands of the forms of knowledge taught at the university from the perspective of their relation to knowledge. It is an exploratory, qualitative, and descriptive study with a qualitative sample with theoretical representativeness of sixteen students from six university courses offered in the second half of 2012 at Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, Colombia. Five dimensions of the relation to knowledge were adopted: (1) meaning, (2) dimension of what is important in knowledge, (3) didactic contract, (4) identity and affective relation to knowledge, and (5) study attitudes. Three general features have emerged from the research: (1) although students accepted the requirement of meaning in their relation to knowledge, they also expect moments of designation; (2) the distance between the course aims and the representation that the student may have of the source practice and target practice is a major obstacle in the relation; (3) the distance between the perception of the demands of the professor before and after evaluation is a common characteristic of the courses. The comprehensive hypothesis has been confirmed: the response given by students to the demands of the forms of knowledge taught at university depends on their relation to knowledge and the attitudes and negotiations or approaches that this relations implies.