Revista de la Secretaría de Extensión y Bienestar Estudiantil, Filo:UBA
Secretaría de Extensión y Bienestar Estudiantil, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Tutoring is a strategy that has become a polysemous concept that has a meaning according to the place and educational level where it is developed. In Argentina, in the 20th century, there was an expansion in enrollment at all educational levels that made the differences more marked, and institutions had to respond to various difficulties. There is a process that is known as “exclusionary inclusion” since although the university opens its doors, it makes no attempt to retain its students. Tutoring became a support device to address these problems. The “Universitarios por más Universitarios” program is a tutoring system that complements the “Nicolás Avellaneda” scholarship, which is intended for students in the last year of secondary education in public schools in the south of the city, who stand out for their high grades and for presenting socioeconomic vulnerability. This program is distinguished by personalized support provided by a tutor who is an advanced student and/or recent graduate of the University of Buenos Aires. These tutors have developed skills that have allowed them to adapt to university life and it is necessary to transmit them to the young scholarship holders so that they can access the higher level in better conditions. General and personalized activities are proposed, designed and agreed upon in a Tutorial Action Plan. In addition, the tutor remains attentive to academic difficulties. In conclusion, the population that enters the university for the first time imposes a series of demands since it is not enough to open the door and enroll them, but it is necessary to make room for them, physically and symbolically, so that they can stay, go forward and finish their studies. Tutoring systems like the one we have shown can become central devices for that objective.
Building community: university wellfare as an educational policy
The Secretariat of University Welfare (SUW), as a management area of the National University of Avellaneda, has been configured as an area for the creation and implementation of lines of work linked, on the one hand, to the policies of care from the promotion and defense of rights and, on the other, to the participation of the university community as a daily invitation, going through each of the actions, projects and programs developed. In this way, we propose to conceive welfare as an ambit that makes it possible to accompany and sustain the educational and work trajectories of those of us who study and work at the university, a path that is strengthened in the collective encounter with the unions and the representative groups of the university, along with a necessary articulation with other management areas, departments and careers, as well as with public institutions and organizations that inhabit our territory. In this process, which is guided day by day and acquires meaning in the defense of the right to higher education, those of us who are part of it as teachers, non teaching staff, graduates and students of the educational community are involved. In this way, in this article we propose to characterize the lines of work of the SUW, taking into account the complex development and the framework built in these years to be able, in an articulated and interdisciplinary way, to work to house, care for, accompany, and break down barriers, promote solidarity and camaraderie as values against the grain of scenarios of social fragmentation. We will also try to give an account of some reflections about university policy as praxis, problematizing university welfare as multidimensional and with the power to generate more egalitarian itineraries in educational and professional trajectories, building community.
In this work we socialize the implementation of an educational project that aims to develop “a generous teaching and learning device” in and for future teachers, while tending to strengthen the educational proposals of the Secondary Level Education Centers of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (CENS) with orientation in Labor Relations / Occupational Safety and Hygiene. of the City of Buenos Aires. The proposal we presented was developed within the framework of different calls of the UBANEX Project and a UBACyT PDE. In its design and development, emphasis was placed on the incorporation of various mediations and different interventions were carried out to think about the social in a reflexive way, recognizing possible paths in the face of the current reality. The strictly formative purposes of this device try to assume the sociocultural and civilizational complexity of the current context, of the different actors involved, of the different inhabited spaces, of the deepening and curricular updating of the specific theme of these CENS, of the diversity of educational and labor trajectories. One of the fundamental methodological strategies is the elaboration of co-created workshops between teachers and students, which constitutes a novel way of teaching the social that we develop within the framework of our subject, and in which we propose with special focus the teaching and learning generously. We understand “generosity” as a quality that refers to abundance, and at the same time as an attempt to promote, a practice focused on giving or sharing with others, without expecting or receiving anything in return. Likewise, this proposal also crosses the treatment of the importance of democratic life in all its scopes.
Digital technologies: enabling or limiting?
This article analyzes the experience developed during the PST seminar “Technologies and socio-territorial organizations: expansion of the right to education in Jujuy.” It was presented by the Technology, Culture and Knowledge chair of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires and conceived as a space for co-construction of communicative tools and products adequate to the needs expressed by some socioterritorial organizations of Jujuy during 2020, which were looking for digital tools to disseminate products, convene meetings, inform about rights and produce educational resources. Some interesting issues that are addressed here are: it was developed remotely, with synchronous and asynchronous meetings, to respond to the urgent needs of ASPO, when -precisely- one of the obstacles was the lack of connectivity and the problems of available digital equipment. This motivated significant reflections regarding appropriate and relevant languages, modes and communication strategies. In this context, the article addresses the enabling and limiting nature of digital technologies, and the variation in demands and opportunities that arose as isolation was left behind.
The PIRI Rural Interdisciplinary Internship Program
This document gives an account of a university bonding experience, with a situated character, called the Interdisciplinary Rural Internship Program (PIRI). It refers to the field of professional training in health, particularly in the field of community public health and local development. In the first section, the territory in which the PIRI is implemented and developed is described, giving an account of its socio-historical characteristics, in a cultural key. Subsequently, the historical journey is shared, from the origin to the main dimensions that make up the epistemic, methodological approach and the actors involved. In a third moment, he realizes the territorial, local and international relations that the PIRI has established over the years, highlighting the characteristics of the territory as a learning scenario. In the final part, the reversive role of the program is proposed and developed, understood as a creative counterproposal, which faces university business scenarios, to finally reflect on its decolonial and counter-hegemonic contribution, as a space for the revitalization of collective health, with special emphasis on the Latin American influence that defines it.
Community Social Psychology and Women’s Social Participation in Argentina
From the praxis of community social psychology and feminisms, the aim of this paper is to reflect on the experiences of problematisation and co-management of collective-community devices in the enforceability of rights with women participants in social and trade union movements developed in different historical moments of the university extension project in the Observatory of promotion and prevention of community health of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires. The work addresses the tensions of social and political participation of women belonging to the piquetero movement, neighbourhood assemblies and a trade union organisation, using Participatory Action Research as a methodological strategy. In the different processes, a plurality of techniques were implemented, such as in-depth interviews, surveys, participant observations, life stories, focus groups, workshops and participatory evaluations in/with the organisations, based on relational ethics, dialogicality, justice and equity in access to human rights. In this framework, the article reflects on the possibilities and limits of psychosocial interventions proposed from the field of community social psychology, in a social scenario with neoliberal policies of precariousness of life and devastation of the territories, but also the emergence of new social actors who resist and produce new modes of organisation, sociability and subjectivity. In the current critical scenario, we propose the recovery of historical memory and the knowledge produced from the experiences analysed.
Postcolonial studies, critical and active heirs of the legacy of Edward Said, offer an indispensable critical perspective to approach the philosophies of India and China. The purpose of this paper is to show how Orientalism operates in the philosophical training of our academic environment, to analyze the progress and perspectives of postcolonial studies regarding the philosophies of India and China, and to reflect on the challenges of getting away from Orientalism, particularly from a Latin American perspective, which, due to its inherent cultural identity discomfort adds complexity to the issue and bears a promising potential.
From the academy to the territory: an experience in extension from the gender perspective
The following article is based on the experiences carried out through the University Extension Project “Building citizenship from a gender perspective”, of the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL), in conjunction with the Civil Association “Generar” from the city of Santa Fe. The purpose of this was to open a space for dialogue and exchange in the San Agustín II neighborhood of the aforementioned city, where various institutional referents were convened to learn about their problems and offer training on gender and violence through a dynamic where all voices could be heard. Collective reading and the deconstruction of internalized concepts favored the opening to an emancipatory dialogue, a kickstart for the construction of a new citizenship. Finally, it was intended to begin the assembly of an inter-institutional network to address said issues and the delivery of a resourcer with information to continue the work begun. This article aims to bring together communication as a socio-political practice and gender as a construction of citizenship situated in a socio-historical and cultural context from a critical and reflective perspective.
Reinforcement of Educational Trajectories at University: the Role and Power of Extension
Accessibility and autonomy: the construction of the first easy reading club in Uruguay
The article presents the planning and design process of the first Easy Reading Club of Uruguay, a joint work of the Interdisciplinary Communication and Accessibility Nucleus (NICA) of the University of the Republic and the Down Association of Uruguay (ADdU). This is a pilot project whose planning process promotes reflections on the conditions necessary for the exercise of rights based on access to information. Its development identifies the conceptual bases that structure the project, which is transversalized by the human rights approach and the concept of accessibility. Below is the device of reading clubs and easy reading as an incipient accessibility tool that is used by people with intellectual disabilities as one of their priority groups. In the development of the article the origins and articulations for the construction of the project are documented, making visible the construction of the pilot from the university extension. The agreed design for the development of the project is presented, identifying the roles and methodologies proposed to explore the sustained use of the Easy Reading.
DOSSIER: Tribute to Edward Said: Hermeneutics, Criticism and Liberation
Cátedra Libre de Estudios Palestinos Edward Said
This article pays tribute to Edward W. Said, to his Palestinian life in exile between two worlds, and to his legacy. It is a reflection on the ethical and political rights that must be restored to subjugated peoples so that they can tell their stories in the face of representation which, by default, is always distorted and instantaneous. Between-worlds is perhaps the precise way to characterise his life as a Palestinian exile, and his work as an intellectual and musician. Said mastered orientalist and post-colonial criticism, comparative literature, music, always with a sincere and deep ethical-political commitment to the Palestinian people and to artists.
The 19th century as the century of orientalism
This essay analize three aspects that must be considered as constitutive of nineteenth-century European Orientalism. Returning to Said's proposals, I explored the scientific efforts of the first Orientalists and their relationship with the colonial dominion over the Orient; at the same time, this work investigates the role of Romanticism in the projection of an oriental world linked to mysticism and spirituality. Resignifying the Saidian proposal, some devices and artifacts that made orientalism circulate among different social sectors are addressed, such as travel books, shows and consumer products, which allowed orientalism to insert itself into the urban daily life of the metropolis.
“Practicing the South” from and with Edward Said
The ability of literature to function as the signifier of hegemonic power is undeniable, insofar as it has historically been able to canonize texts that respond to prevailing policies and, in parallel, build reading models that legitimize them. This legitimation is mainly based on the field of literary criticism, which, under academic assumptions, elaborates the production, consumption and analysis devices that contribute to building and disseminating value judgments and perspectives of the world. The article analyzes, on the one hand, how literary criticism cannot be separated from colonial and modern influences, as these have shaped both its interests and its methodologies; on the other hand, and based on these premises, it is proposed to read the work of Edward Said as a metacritical intervention that allows us to re-examine the Eurocentric foundations and the colonial bases of literary criticism.
In a world where emancipatory frames of intelligibility are scarce, Edward Said provides, through his works, ways of thinking with the potential to liberate people, subjectivities and patterns of reasoning. In a context of complete dehumanization, marked by various oppressions and ways of being and feeling increasingly distant from human warmth, we highlight Said’s work as a protection against crushing totalizations. Here we conduct an analysis of the work Orientalism in order to pedagogize its content, transmit knowledge with commitment and rigor and expand ways of understanding the teaching task as a creation of conceptuality for others.
An experience with intrinsic components: school strengthening of FinEsTec students
Scientific knowledge has become part of the curricular spaces of middle level schools. In this particular case, technical schools work on them in the classroom due to the profile that students develop in order to motivate them to scrutinize the academic assets that they must discover in science and technology. In this context, the subject is part of the curricula of students who are in the last stage of their secondary education. However, and due to different situations that some of them have had to go through, they have been forced to leave the school field that contained them, unable to complete the secondary level. Faced with this situation, through this project and through an agreement made between the National University of La Rioja and the Directorate of Professional Technical Education of the province, a training scheme aimed at accompanying those students who could not finish with the curricular space linked to scientific knowledge and research methodology, guiding them on how they should explore to untangle and recognize knowledge that moves away from doxa and approaches episteme.
Some Thoughts about the Activities of the CIDAC Extension Team “Letras Clásicas” (2012-2017)
This article offers a systematization of the extension activities accomplished between 2012 and 2017 by a team of teachers, students and graduates in the area of Classical Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires in the Centre for Innovation and Development for Community Action (CIDAC). On this base, a broader reflection on the challenges of university extension is proposed. The importance of the commitment of the institutions involved is postulated as a central idea and, in relation to this, the need to conceive university extension as a transversal and cooperative practice.
Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires
An opportunity for affectivity in teacher training
In this article we propose to systematize and analyze our experience between 2018 and 2022 as a pedagogical duo in charge of the Teaching of Social Sciences III subject at the “Dora Acosta” Higher Institute of Teacher Training for Primary Education, located in the Carlos Mujica neighborhood. This instance addresses the disciplinary fields of Social Sciences and their specific Didactics, enhanced with the proposal to mainstream the approach of Comprehensive Sexual Education (ESI). Initially we will carry out an institutional framing, framing the experience in the deployment of extension practices, and curricular, giving an account of the global focus of the subject. Then focus on the proposal of a particular activity in which we seek to articulate the didactics of recent history and the development of content on the last civic-military dictatorship with an artistic approach, supporting the assessment of affectivity, a gender perspective and human rights. Next, we will share some productions of the students, the result of this invitation, and we will address some reflections on the activity as a process. Finally, we will propose certain ideas that arise from the analysis on the incorporation of ESI and the artistic field as enhancers of reflective and affective processes for teacher training in the field of Social Sciences and its Specific Didactics.
Weaving Life: The First Steps of a University Extension Experience in La Rioja (Argentina)
“Weaving Life” is the name of a university extension project at the National University of La Rioja, funded by the Secretary of Policies, in the 2021 call for “University, Territory, and Culture”. This project proposes intergenerational recreational and cultural spaces that revalue popular knowledge to promote well-being through weaving as a unifying médium, “Las Eximias”, its members, are a group of women residing in the city of La Rioja, which has emerged within the extension experience. The group meets weekly, and the meeting location has varied depending on agreements with different organizations. It has evolved as an informal educational space that also functions as a network supporting each participant. The project fosters connection, dialogue, and support among the group members through the production of interlearning in weaving, dyes, and ancestral techniques. The main purpose of the project was, based on previous experiences, to respond to the needs of those who shared an interest in weaving associated with therapeutic pursuits. Consequently, a group of professionals decided to resume this intersection and make it available to other women who wished to join a group with these characteristics. The call was open, and thus began the proposal for group-community extension. The guiding methodology employed in this proposal is based on action research, supported by participant observation and ethnographic recording. This article systematizes the process undertaken to date, the result of collective reflection by the group of women (self-identified as “Las Eximias”) consisting of professionals, neighbors, and individuals interested in the proposed integration of weaving techniques and therapeutic group goals. The activities carried out are described to highlight the meanings set in motion along the journey.
From the documentary archive to the reserche question: reflections about the history of the Anthropological Sciences degree (FFyL-UBA)
In this article, we discuss our progress and considerations related to the investigation project “Histories in UBA’s degree of Anthropological Sciences: paths, memories, and archives”. The project began in 2021, with our initial exploration of the archives of the Anthropology Department in the School of Philosophy and Literature, aiming to shape the timeline of its authorities. Throughout this process, we created materials, conducted interviews, and made presentations. Building trajectories and memories of the past and present led us to inquire about the meanings and forms of scientific communication.
DOSSIER: Public Communication of Science
In this paper, we will undertake a series of reflections related to our participation as presenters in the 13th Edition of Tecnópolis in the space Identidades Sin Límites - Un Viaje de Humanidad. Our goal is to contribute to the knowledge of the university community based on the lessons learned throughout this experience. Additionally, we will highlight the benefits that participation as students in this space entails and aim to emphasize its enriching nature in the context of our professional development as students of Anthropology at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (FFyL).
Anthropologic question(s) and identities: reflections concerning teaching experiences in Tecnopolis
This paper shares some reflections inspired by my teaching practices at the exhibition Identidades sin Límites: Un Viaje de Humanidad (Identities without Limits: A Journey of Humanity) in Tecnopolis (Buenos Aires, Argentina). The exhibition of Identidades aims to stimulate the deconstruction and denaturalisation of racist and Eurocentric ideas within the visitors by exposing them to different encounters with alterity at the same it implicitly works with the idea of plural identities. My hypothesis is that visitors belonging to African or Indigenous collectivities, or related to people who disappeared during the last civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983) saw their experiences reflected, so the exhibition of Identidades… would ease the activation of identity marks in the visitors, according to Claudias Briones’ proposition.
Communication strategies to increase the visibility of the Geography program
This article presents the Communication and Outreach Plan initiated by the Geography Department in the context of the Mandatory Preventive Social Isolation (ASPO) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of the plan was to achieve greater visibility for the Geography Program and increase enrollment, while also strengthening digital communication channels and creating new spaces for interaction with students to foster a sense of belonging and provide guidance. The pillars of the communication plan are described, highlighting the dissemination of content related to the Geography Program and the discipline from the perspective of public science communication. One key strategy was the establishment of an Instagram profile, which complemented existing channels such as the Department’s website and the Facebook page. The article describes the target audience of the Instagram page, and both, internal and external communication. Strategies for generating engaging and relevant content are discussed, as well as interactions with followers and promoting geography through this platform. The article emphasizes the importance of integration and long-term sustainability of communication actions in order to achieve the proposed objectives.
New solidarity ruralities in times of pandemic
This paper addresses the readaptation process carried out by the Monte Vera Producers Fair (Santa Fe, Argentina) during the social and health emergency caused by COVID-19. The New Solidarity Ruralities approach is used to frame this practice of Social and Solidarity Economy and the actions carried out from the different state levels are analyzed as well as the representations of the producers about the modifications that have occurred in their homes, at work and in the commercialization processes of the fair by using the technique of semi-structured interviews. In general, it can be noted that the producers positively valued the new sales format adopted and proposed its continuity in a post-pandemic context.
“Every time I had to choose, I prioritized CIDAC.” The invisible gears of extension project management
Presentation of the Dossier: Filo/UBA, ten years of participation in Tecnópolis