The curriculum of the Technical Course in Agriculture: subverting the concept of curriculum matrix

Abstract

This article analyzes the factors that have influenced the composition of the curriculum used in the Technical Course in Agriculture of the Center for Agriculture and Forrest Teaching and Development throughout its existence. We have tried to understand the way in which the modifications in the curriculum have happened, identifying the changes in themes developed during the formation of the professional, the sources of influence for the transformations that occurred, the actors involved, the demands coming from the society and, also, how curriculum modifications are incorporated into teaching practices. A survey of primary and secondary data was made. In the primary data survey we used school archive documents from the Technical Course in Agriculture, and we carried out interviews with teachers involved in the course, identifying their views on the context associated to the process of modifying the curriculum. The secondary data survey included a research into the specialized literature and in the legal documentation for the area of professional education. We can say that the theoretical viewpoint adopted in the present work - which conceives curriculum first as a configuration, and not as something given and, second, as a field of forces within which the imbalances between the actors involved in its configuration are established through the indisputability of reality - is here upheld. In other words, it is not admissible that the State should impose laws that cannot be implemented, nor that the school should ignore the changes coming from society and the State, nor that society should fail to adapt to these new directions.