Perspective of Teaching in University Professors: Case Study in A Chilean University

Abstract

The present study aims to critically analyse university teaching from the perspective of the actors themselves, since the exercise of teaching allows the teacher to look at their pedagogical practice, interpret it, and recreate it, also turning it into a source of learning from a perspective of change and innovation. In methodological terms, the study is based on the interpretive paradigm which is intended to understand how teachers mean the teaching process, therefore, the methodology option is qualitative through the case study. The data have been obtained through focus groups, with the participation of 16 university professors, a question that allowed the emergence of the discourse of the investigated subjects referring to their experience in the exercise of university teaching. The results point to the importance of didactics in the learning process, the establishment of good personal relationships with their students, the deep mastery of the content of the discipline taught by the teacher, the adequate theory-practice relationship, and the primary concern for the learning in their classrooms, as factors that stand out in those teachers who transcend in the lives of their students. They also open up the opportunity for a series of questions, many of them about the role of university teachers in their capacity as trainers of trainers.