Reading as the axis for socioeducational interventions: a formative experience at the beginning of the Social Education program in Uruguay

Abstract

This article presents a formative and evaluation experience for first-year students of the Social Educator degree in Uruguay from the integration of two curricular units: Academic Literacy and Pedagogical Theories l. The students of the Instituto de Formación en Educación Social (IFES), within the framework of an extension proposal that took reading as the articulating axis of socio-educational projects, designed and implemented interventions during several days around the celebration for the Day of the Book, considering reading in its cultural, diverse and pluralistic dimensions. The proposal promoted dialogue between theory and practice from an interdisciplinary approach. The intervention was carried out in formal and non-formal educational institutions and allowed future social educators to experience, in a situated way, discursive practices specific to their professional field. The proposal offered input to question their role in constructing meanings, ways of being and existing in the world from a critical pedagogy and a rights-based perspective. The proposal fostered reciprocal learning among teachers, students and children, highlighting the role of the social educator and reading in cultural mediation. The assessments of the participating actors show the positive impact of this experience on professional training at the beginning of the course of studies and position reading as a fundamental tool in socio-educational intervention. Likewise, the experience made it possible to identify challenges in the institutionalization of extension proposals in Education Training in Uruguay, degrees that are still tertiary, not-university level, and require structural conditions that favour the extension-teaching-research articulation as a step towards the formation of a University of Education.