Voces de la memoria: tejiendo relatos colectivos para fortalecer la escritura, la oralidad y el arte en estudiantes de básica primaria

Abstract

This research explores the challenges of strengthening communication skills in elementary school students living in school contexts affected by the Colombian armed conflict. In these settings, the experiences of children marked by displacement, silence, loss, emotional bonds, and memories of their territory shape unique forms of expression and meaning-making that challenge traditional pedagogical practices. In these practices, writing, orality, and art are often treated as formal skills disconnected from lived experience. In response to this challenge, the study aimed to strengthen communication skills, the construction of collective memory, and cultural identity in fifth-grade students from three schools located in areas affected by the armed conflict (Buenaventura, Cali, and Apartadó). This was achieved through a pedagogical strategy that integrates orality, writing, and art as tools for reinterpreting lived experience. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative approach and embraces Participatory Action Research as its comprehensive and transformative framework, enabling a critical analysis of school realities and the development of contextualized pedagogical alternatives. Fourth and fifth grade elementary school students participated, and the instruments used included a characterization interview, a workshop focused on affective experience, and a pedagogical workshop geared towards the production of narratives related to memory and territory. The results demonstrate that memory is configured as a pedagogical mediation that energizes language, organizes experience, and fosters the construction of meaning. The integration of orality, writing, and artistic expression strengthened not only communication skills but also listening skills, trust, and the construction of collective memory, highlighting the school's potential as a space for welcoming and symbolically reconstructing learning.

The main contribution of this research lies in the consolidation of a situated pedagogical approach that integrates collective memory as the central axis of communicative practices, demonstrating its capacity to enhance processes of recognition, subjectivation, and meaning-making in educational contexts affected by armed conflict.

In conclusion, linking memory with communicative and artistic practices allows lived experience to be narrated, shared, and reinterpreted within the school setting.