La calidad en los procesos académicos de enseñanza aprendizaje en los programas de Terapia Ocupacional en Latinoamérica. Estudio de casos: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad de Chile y Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2006-2018)

Abstract

The quality of higher education in the academic processes of teaching and learning at Occupational Therapy programs and contexts, is a complex topic that should be treated taking into account different theoretical focuses. Clearly, it is required the discussion and study to continue in the improvement and implementation of fundamental issues for educational agents, human beings, and society in general. The purpose of this research, was to analyze critically the teaching and learning process in the Occupational Therapy scenarios of the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Chile and the National University of Colombia, during 2006 and 2018. Moreover, this research was developed in order to understand the possible academic routes, through a critical analysis of program´s conceptions and practices. The methodological purpose of this research, finds its roots in a qualitative focus with an epistemological perspective based on critical hermeneutics. It consists in a study of collective cases where some qualitative techniques were used as bridges to analyze critically what was documented regarding the detailed interviews developed with the main educational actors: Management teachers, students and graduated students from different educational programs It is found that the teaching and learning quality of these programs, is linked as a right to an occupation of the educational agents, who must recognize the historical path they have developed as professionals as well as their academic, learning and teaching processes. Likewise, the right to the care of the agents that are vulnerable and excluded by the society are the center of attention to the occupational therapists that motivates the relevance of study of this doctoral thesis. The critical analysis and the comprehension of the actors, allowed the research to discovered certain conflicts: Firstly, among the models of quality included in two programs of OT and the found conceptualizations in the triad of researchers, authors and educational entities with participation, as fundamental sources of information. Secondly, the other conflict, is related to the quality conceptualization of higher education that moves on spaces of the indicator to give a step to the transformation of the educational, subjects and the orientation/attention members since a contextual and social perspective. In third place, among the fulfillment of the guidelines and the educational actors’ realities to answer the same questionings. The fourth, between the expectations of educational actors in relation to the academic processes of teaching and learning in the universities from the state and the complexity of these in contextual situations. When studying these South American universities’ cases of Occupational Therapy, it seeks to understand the horizons in a sense of region which contributes to a different contextual perspective in relation to a way of appropriation in the quality of preparing teaching and learning processes in professionals.