Between theory and practice: How we know what we know?

Probably the most interesting and curious thing of my career is the lack of practical activities in the program. Psychology in Universidad de Chile doesn’t have a practical orientation, so we usually don’t have any kind of practice that has been included in the syllabus of our courses a priori. Nevertheless, we always have some teachers whose opinions are different. They think practice is necessary and essential for our academic and professional training.

This semester I have my first all-practical subject: School Ethnography. This course, in fact, has become in a research team, because all the students have formed groups to do the fieldwork, but we all are studying the same phenomenon: the violence in educational contexts. Each group has to go to different kind of schools (private and public) and then we have a meeting every two weeks. In this reunion we talk about our experiences, read the field notes and discuss what we going to do the next visit, what we have to observe or what we have to ask.

This fieldwork has been very enjoyable. My group partners and I have reach the “synergy”, I mean, we don’t have many problems to coordinate as a team. However, the problems we have faced are related to the institutional protocols. We are studying the violent dynamics that occur in Liceo José Victorino Lastarria, but they are very cautious and suspicious to give us access to the school, so we had to be very careful with all we say or we do in the fieldwork.

This approach to the practice in educational context has been a motivation to me. I appreciate to have the opportunity to get involved in this activity, and know better the kind of relationships that we can face in the schools, because I think that practice is the only way to learn to be the best professional and prevent mistakes in the futures.  

Kind regards! :)