Community student participation

Abstract

Community training for students of pedagogy in early child- hood education at the University of La Serena, Chile, involves permanent par- ticipation in the sociocultural processes that arise in their practical sessions. This participation reduces the risk of schooling and accommodative experiences in their vocational training. The students’ learning process is non-linear, seeking tensions between the programmed order of the class with the emergence of a possible transformation in the marginal urban community in which they participate, a process they will recount throughout their four-year university education. As the students discover the community, they recognize the educational synergies that emerge in the informal spaces and times where community life takes place, generating resources for the transformation of university teaching and learning processes.