Thinking about educational excellence in the Superior Normal Schools: A historical look

Abstract

The following historical-educational work accounts for the way in which the Higher Normal Schools from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century experienced four conjunctural moments that justify, in broad strokes, the historical educational development of these institutions in Colombia and, especially in the Coffee Axis. By virtue of this, the relationship with the subject of pedagogical knowledge, the teacher, is realized; the pedagogical-legislative transformations that have given rise, in these pedagogical laboratories, to other possibilities of pedagogical practices, which, perhaps, transcend and concern the actuality of the normalist teachers.

This research work was carried out with reference to the stages of the historical method: Heurisitca (identification and selection of sources); Doxography (classification of information); Etiology (interpretation of information); and Historical synthesis (final report), with the objective to give an account of the historical evolution of the Normal Schools, which are recognized as institutions responsible for the training of teachers for the first levels. Among the findings it can be stated that the Superior Normal Schools as entities for the training of teachers of the first levels of education in Colombia, are institutions that allow to understand, identify and determine scientific research processes of historical order; in virtue of the fact that these institutions can recognize the main problems that affect the training of teachers in the country, based on the historical, theoretical, practical and experiential interpretation of their work to account for their role in the educational act, which is its field of action.