Voces y Silencios. Revista Latinoamericana de Educación

Voces silec. rev. latinoam. educ. | eISSN 2215-8421

The Graduate Teaching Assistants’ training process in the community of practice of the Writing Center at Universidad de los Andes - Centro de Español

No. 2 (2020-08-01)
  • Eduardo Escallón
    1Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia (je.escallon27@uniandes.edu.co) ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6744-3362
  • Valeria Parra Gregory
    2Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia (v.parra10@uniandes.edu.co)
  • Christian Vásquez
    3Northwestern University, Chicago, Estados Unidos (cdvasquez@u.northwestern.edu)
https://doi.org/10.18175/VyS11.2.2020.7

Abstract

The Writing Center at Universidad de los Andes — Centro de Español— is a community of practice composed of tutors, instructors, and coordinators, whose purpose is to contribute to the development of reading, writing and critical thinking skills by their students. To achieve this goal, the Center has designed its Writing Program under Lev Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical Activity Theory. This program consists of tutoring sessions, writing across the curriculum and in the disciplines, and writing courses whose design follows the same pedagogical principles. In addition to being the pillars of pedagogical support for students, these principles are the basis of the training process for tutors and teachers. This article presents the scenarios and activities that make up this training process and the theoretical framework behind its design. The experience described here shows that the members of this community are immersed in an environment of ongoing learning, through interaction, practice and recognition of previous knowledge and experiences of each of its members.

Keywords: community of practice, guided participation, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, critical thinking, learning, training process

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