Assignment Unit 1

1. Instituto de Formación Docente Continua
Lenguas Vivas Bariloche (A-052)
Práctica Docente III - Nivel Secundario
Plan 2015
Tutor’sname: AureliaVelázquez
Assignment: Unit 1
Students’names: Zentner, Valeria - Risso,
Guillermina - Orelia, Analía
Emails: zentnervaleria@gmail.com, guilleminarisso2@gmail.com,
aorelia769@gmail.com

2. Deadline:March 26th
Mandatory Assignment 1
The following assignment is a collaborative task. You may work in pairs or
groups of three. Each student must upload the assignment to the Campus.
Josef James, a former teacher who is passionate about education, reflects on
the role secondary school should play in society. His talk aims at inspiring some
kind of changes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSixbEDOYgA
After reading the suggested materials and watching the TEDx Talk, you should
draw up your conclusions of the distinguishing characteristics that define
secondary education, its aims and foundations. You should also describe both
the learner and the teacher, bearing in mind today's challenges and
requirements.
Development
Drawing on the Secondary Education Curriculum, the school has to guarantee the
learning-teaching to all students to allow them to interact effectively in a globalised
world. Diversity, inclusion and multiculturality are underlined in the Curriculum. In the
light of this, teaching L2 helps to develop cognitive and linguistic skills associated with
the practice of reading, writing, listening, and speaking through different texts of
literature and diverse activities. It encounters the understanding of their own culture,
knowing others, and broadening the vision of the world, one characterized by scientific,
technical, technological and economic communication. Nevertheless, XXI Century
needs a change to accomplish this aforementioned foundation. This current period
requires new goals to define, redesign and an attempt to innovate the process of
education in a deeper learning project.
To start with, the XX century left us as educators the structures of the thoughts through
practice and contents, then the metacognitive aspects to achieve the knowledge and
last the critical thinking to understand certain issues presented in this globalised world
(Mariana Maggio, 2018). However, these aspects make us reflect on the effectiveness

3. of the employment of thinking and critical skills to assess newer generations of
learners. As educators, we have to face our students’ demands as global citizens and
design our teaching based on the real world. New pedagogies are key if we want a
successful future for them.
On the other side, school has to offer a new vision of the learning-teaching process
due to the constant and accelerated advance of technology, the XXI century impacts
over past pedagogical conception and the curriculum itself. What is more, certain
barriers are present in today’s world as new policies to install a reform, measures to
figure out the assessment of learning conditions, the construction of new pedagogies
models to go forward a deeper learning and learning-work so as learners can co-create
learning and be more prepared for todays’ world (Fullan and Langworthy, 2013)
It is the school duty to provide learners with the opportunities to acquire the necessary
knowledge to join the forthcoming job-world. However, in a globalised world that is
constantly changing and evolving, students need more than knowledge and
information. Based on Josef James’ statistics, most secondary students think
education means ‘job assurance’, but we know that it is more than that. The newer
generation needs to develop critical and creative skills, respect, discipline and ethics
as well. These are the skills Gardner claims as the Five Minds of the Future, which in
fact, are the ones that every student needs to develop as citizens and human beings.
It is essential for them to develop such skills to be able to deal with information and
take decisions based on it, be part of the community and contribute to its development,
progress and evolution, to choose rightly what to do when they face difficult situations
that require moral attitudes, to follow their hearts and do what they feel is correct and
not what society want and force them to do, to assert their rights and take part in
democracy, and to look for ways to make this world a better one. In few words, life-
long creative, collaborative and sensitive beings.
Based on this, we may affirm that secondary schools need to rebuild up some aspects
in Education, working on new pedagogies for deep learning. It is time to include each
and every student, providing them with the same opportunities for learning and
participation within the classroom. Encourage the gifted students to continue and strive
to graduate from school so that they will be able to become part of the world outside
of it. Encourage students not only to play a role within the economic policies of our

4. country, but to go beyond those barriers. It is vital to show them that there is much
more out there to fight for and to care about. It is vital that we take the role of guides
and help these students to discover what they like and what they are good at, what
their expectations and dreams are, encourage them to follow and fulfill them with
passion. Following these steps, secondary school should be thought as something
more than the place where students take subjects to acquire knowledge, but as a place
that seeks a comprehensive, ethical, human and civic training of each of its students,
preparing them for a world that will continue to change and needs them to continue
growing and evolving for good.