| Sumario: |
Arguably, the University is the place where students come to cap their education, in
this case a professional education. The University as well is the place where people is expected to develop fully their intellectual skills to better personal and professional outcomes (Perry 1970, 1981). The University of El Salvador, for this matter, stresses these goal in its mission and vision. However, coming to study at the University poses so many challenges for students: for one simple thing, the instructional format the University uses is somewhat different from that the students are familiar with from High School. This means that the students seeking a University degree must develop ways to manage themselves to do independent learning, to make their own decisions regarding most of the curricular choices. Some of this implies learning to manage their studies and learning in a fashion that was not the case before, where they had all curricular aspects arranged for them by
other individuals or agencies. Following is a short elaboration of this point. In Primary school and High School the curriculum was all set for the students to just
follow through. The academic rules and the like had all been decided beforehand by the Ministry of Education or related agencies, usually in conjunction with other knowledgeable experts in what a High School program was about. The decisions on what to study in the different courses, and under what regulations had already been arranged. The curriculum itself is mostly about having courses in which the teacher presents the lesson or talks to the students, and the students just listen passively with little room for independent action. This situation ends up making the students passive individuals who arguably want their teachers at the university to behave much like their previous teachers in High School. (Sanders et al, 2005)
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