Historias de vida profesional docente y tutoría en la universidad

Abstract

The implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in Spain has created the need to encourage a change in different areas of the higher educational scene (methodologies, the conception of the teaching- learning process, the importance of tutoring, the importance of the students, etc.)/ and the main responsibility to achieve this goal has been directly placed in the teacher's role. Therefore, the research we present turns to the presence of the most experienced university teachers and the most concerned about their professional practice, in order to gather their voices and thoughts as a starting point, to offer a perception to the scientific community, from different areas of knowledge, of the meaning of being a teacher (teaching profession) and a tutor (tutoring) in today's university. From a qualitative research framework, we make use of the biographical-narrative methodology, mainly the life histories, to go into detail about the most notorious features in the professional teaching development model. We pay special attention to the impact of external factors (social, political, educative and family contexts) and internal factors (personal, educational and professional experiences), standing out some of the most characteristic features and qualities of the teacher's identity and the pedagogical thinking, of six professors from the University of Huelva. We use the life histories to validate the experienced professional careers of six teachers from different scientific fields, to give an interpretation of their contribution that, through their professional practice, they offer to the university teaching development in general, and to the tutoring in particular, in a period when the changes that we have talked about are consolidated in the Spanish higher educational framework. As a conclusion, the results gathered during the process of this research allow us to glimpse different premises linked to the objectives that guided this process: on one hand, from a methodological level, stands out the potentiality of the life histories as scientific research methods. On the other hand, from a conceptual level, stand out different alternatives that will help to improve the professional practice of: a. Teaching. In this practice, factors such as the importance of experiences, training, reflection about the practice, internationalization, etc., are decisive to achieve the design and development of a teaching-learning process based in the student's characteristics, in the good practices, and linked to the guidelines established in the European higher educational framework. This with the purpose of creating a teaching identity that shows certain principles, linked to their professional field and to other related fields. b. Tutoring practice. In order to encourage the importance of this practice in the higher educational framework, there are necessary factors such as: the regard of tutoring as a resource that is linked to the teaching practice, and as required to place the student in the center of the learning process, giving the teacher a guide-counselor role. The adoption of a personal tutoring model that provides a comprehensive answer. The total commitment with the rest of the university community, and in collaboration with the other teachers, to transfer and incorporate the good practices and innovation in the tutorial practice, as a mean to achieve a complete personal development, These concepts allow the university teachers to get the necessary strategies to adequate the teaching and tutoring professional practice (for novel and experienced teachers) in the current Spanish university scenario.