10º Aniversario del Colegio de Pedagogos de Catalunya

El mismo día de la celebración del 10º aniversario del COPEC sale la  Revista EIX, en la cual viene el artículo "Música, Diseño y Sistema Educativo" escrito por Eugenia López Reus y Miguel Jaime. El artículo propone extender a todo el sistema educativo la pedagogía reflexiva responsable del éxito del Sistema de Orquestas de Venezuela y las prácticas reflexivas del taller de diseño.

The Future of Architectural Education

The future is currently the most uncertain thing to think about. But present is not easy to understand either: what is going on right now has become a matter of experts, no common sense stuff. Education is not an exception, and architectural education even more.

The best idea to get a glimpse of how future architects will be taught is to ask the experts. The link takes to 5 very short essays by educational experts (click on them and they will open) that predict future architectural education.

The point of view of this blog is that, in the near future, architects will become aware of the fact that they have been self-teaching themselves for more than a century now, so they will have the opportunity of starting doing it better, much better. This is the reflexive (r)evolution ahead in pedagogical terms, not only in architecture but especially in it.

Improving Teaching

Since 2009, the MET (Messuring Effective Teaching) Project, is trying to make objective remarks on good teaching practices. That's the way more teachers can improve the way they do things later on. Improving, is what education is all about, and improving education is the most reflective iniciative ever (except designing, of course).

La lección magistral

Lección de Anatomía, Rembrandt, 1632

Se supone que la renovación pedagógica en las universidades españolas empieza este curso, pero no parece que eso vaya a ser factible.

La apatía frente al cambio lleva a demonizar algunas prácticas docentes. Si bien es cierto que es un anacronismo basar toda la enseñanza exclusivamente en lecciones magistrales, tampoco hay que demonizar esta técnica educativa. En medicina, derecho, arquitectura el uso estratégico de la lección magistral es más que recomendable.

Los periódicos son los que más están discutiendo este tema al que permanecen ajenos la mayoría de los claustros de nuestras universidades. El link lleva a un artículo de El País. En él se explica, por ejemplo, como la lectio magister se justificaba cuando no había imprenta y el acceso a la información era escaso o nulo, o cuando había que ser fiel a a las sagradas escrituras en la enseñanza religiosa.

Teaching creativity

A page from the manuscript “La speculazione edilizia” (‘Building Speculation’; 1957)

Creativity is a mystery. How to teach something that is a mystery? Business people have their idea, like in this Stanford's video. The Institute of Creativity and Educational Innovation, University of Valencia has a more artistic idea: it relates perception to action. The latter is closer to the atypical action that produces new perceptions which is art. By the way, art and business is the theme of Italo Calvino's novel Building Speculation written in 1957. It tells the story of a writer that fails in becoming a business man. On the other hand, much later, the same Calvino wrote Six Memos for the Next Millennium which is certainly one of the best creative clues for the future.

At the Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (check the LAR tag) we did the other way round: after doing we started theorizing. Still it looks that Reflexiveness is at the centre of creativity.

El arte de enseñar y aprender

Paulo Freire, el pedagógo brasileño, habla en este corto video de la dimensión ideológica de enseñar y de la importancia de partir del contexto de los alumnos. Simplemente inspirador.

Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (RAL), Laboratorio de Arquitectura Reflexiva (LAR)

Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (RAL), a paper related to the design studios of professors Miguel Jaime and Eugenia Lopez Reus, is going to be presented at an international congress sponsored by the Spanish Universities of Vigo, Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña. The I Congress of University Teaching is going to take place from the 2^nd to the 4^th of June in the beautiful city of Vigo, and it will gather together experts from various countries that are trying to build the European Space for Higher Education.

The RAL combines the reflexive theory of architectural creative process (JAIME, 2000), the importance of context in innovation (LOPEZ REUS, 2002) and modern pedagogical techniques that improve creativity, commitment and excellence.

The RAL has been assessed by the Quality Agency of Castilla León (2005-2008), Benchmarking meetings (2008), and, which is more important for the reflexive philosophy of the RAL, has been highly appreciated by the users of the laboratory, the students, in the surveys (2005-2009). The Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca is about to publish the paper “Las sesiones ECCC en el LAR”, one of the pedagogical techniques of the RAL.