The establishment of a program for early childhood school teachers in Chihuahua, Mexico

Abstract

Over the last decades, evidence provided by multiple studies shows the importance of early childhood education, attesting the repercussions of these programs for individuals throughout their lives. At the same time, teachers in charge of the education processes at these stages should be knowledgeable of child development and have clear how to foster child’s integral development. This work presents a historical account of the establishment of teacher education programs for early childhood schooling through a recollection of experiences. This work is organized in four sections which fill  the lack of records of this process. In the first section, it presents a synthesis of the history of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (National Pedagogic University), institution that  offered for the first time an undergraduate program in Educational Intervention in México.  This section narrates state historical events in Chihuahua from 2002 that marked a change with the advent of such program with a line in child early education. In the second section, there is a presentation of the methodological design for this research project that fundamentally uses oral history and interviews with teachers, administrators, alumni and founders of the university. The third section, presents the results which are enriched with verbal accounts organized in different trends, such as the identitary sense, the work environment, the school profile and the imminent social character of this teacher education program. Finally in the fourth section, the conclusions of this research are presented.