SURVEYING IN THE III MILLENIUM
Rosario – Argentina – October 2000
Theme Area: Curriculum Design

AUTHORS:

Analía Argerich
Gloria del Valle López
Mirtha Rodriguez de Zar (1)

ADDRESS: Analía Argerich, Engineer: Avenida Perón No. 93 – (4700) Catamarca
Tel / Fax: (03833) 422857
È-mail: glopez@tecno.unca.edu.ar

ABSTRACT

          A curriculum implies that a content is organized with codes regulating both pupils’ and teachers’ praxis. Defining the theoretical nucleus of any career path shall lead to systematizing and structuring a content through curricular design. The theoretical nucleus of Land Surveying Engineering and its implications in the selection of essential contents for professional skill training is hereby dealt with.

INTRODUCTION

Actual Argentine education faces us with a challenge to both go through and update the curriculum for every course. In this framework, the Land Surveying Engineering course is doomed to face, in most universities, an arduous curriculum designing process.

An ideological position, a scientific and philosophic baseline budget is clearly and explicitly put forward, and supported on great current – oriented theories, whether technical, critical or practical. Various curriculum models may be identified in each of these great currents, with a lot of common mainly with the context, educational relations, objectives, contents, activities, methodology and evaluation. The need to define a theoretical nucleus for the Land Surveying Engineering course is herein closely examined with a view to easily organize contents through a curriculum design.

SOME BASIC CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT A CURRICULUM

The use of the term “curriculum” became popular with the publication of a book by F. Bobbit, “The Curriculum”, which postulated the need for an organized school practice aiming at a good learning outcome, compatible with the high efficiency required by society at a certain time in the life of a student.

Enrique Paladino claims that a curriculum “generally designs a project organizing an educational activity, provides with a clear indication of what are the intentions behind it, as well as with a course for action to teachers. Thus a whole set of philosophical, pedagogical and psychological principles showing the general path of the education system of a country, a region or an institution are clearly translated”. This shows the comprehensive, all-embracing nature of a curriculum supporting and including both the curriculum and their syllabus.

Hilda Taba proposed a curriculum planning model whose steps included: diagnosing the needs, drawing up objectives, selecting a content, organizing the content, picking up learning activities, establishing what is to be evaluated and determining the means available.

CONTENTS: CONCEPTS AND GENERALITIES

A content consists of a piece of knowledge, a procedure, a rule, a standard and any such skills as are to be chosen and organized to achieve a successful learning process, and all them are absolutely essential to skill training.

A selected content must meet some rational criteria based on validity - that is to say: a selected content should show the current scientific line of thought - it must be pertinent - lead, naturally to attaining any such intention as pursued - and it must further be meaningful - even more in the case of an essential, fundamental content. There are various authors who claim about the need of looking for some kind of balance between encyclopedism and omissions, as both scientific and technological advances have proved that it is impossible to teach everything to everybody, and this forces us to pay special attention to the relationship between “knowing” and “knowing how to do things” with a view to crystallize the link between theory and praxis, between a concept and use.

A systematized content implies a selection process ranging from the most simple to the most complex and aiming at distributing all these concepts throughout academic years or cycles, horizontally-wise, that is to say with a view to connect concepts, procedures and attitudes in the same academic year and thus guarantee the internal consistency of a curriculum; and, on the other hand, vertically-wise, so as to link contents with those of the previous academic cycle and with those to be developed in the next year; with all this - depending, of course, on the internal logic of every science and meeting the pupils’ psychosocial development.

In order to get a systematized content, defining what is the theoretical nucleus of any academic course is just essential; this is to say: determining the initial or invariable summary representing the most fundamental element of knowledge whose major generalization is to characterize a profession.

THE THEORETICAL NUCLEUS OF LAND SURVEYING ENGINEERING

Defining a theoretical nucleus is directly or indirectly linked to the social order sustaining the very existence of this profession. This is how Medicine exists by virtue of a social order demanding health for human beings and, all the subjects making up the Medicine course converge, invariably, to its theoretical nucleus - human anatomy. On the other hand, Agronomy Engineering exists by virtue of a social order demanding food for an increasing population, with its theoretical nucleus based on vegetal physiology, and with the subjects making up this academic Agronomy Engineering course all converging to vegetal physiology - its theoretical core.

As for Land Surveying Engineering, it is likely to state that the social order behind it demands for a territorial organization. With a view to meet this demand, a land surveyor locates, identifies, demarcates, measures, represents, assesses and registers a territorial property. This means that the theoretical nucleus of this course consists in a territorial survey which includes a comprehensive, graphic and analytical description of a territory, whose main aspects are summarized in the concept map at the end of this presentation.

Once the theoretical nucleus of an academic course has been clearly identified, the various areas of knowledge making up the greatest curricula may be determined in terms of concepts, procedures and attitudes.

SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Determining a theoretical nucleus helps to select curricular areas or course fields, as, in general there is no unique criterion and it is frequently difficult to avoid the subjectivity of curriculum designers.

Being the territorial survey the theoretical nucleus for any Land Surveying Engineering course, allows for the organization of cycles and subjects to be organized in terms of any such objectives and contents as involved, with the order or the sequence for the subjects or the learning experiences to be developed. That is to say, identifying what areas call for a previous skill, what issues show a logic sequence and what others may be ordered differently.

THE THEORETICAL NUCLEUS OF LAND SURVEYING ENGINEERING

The territorial survey
A comprehensive, graphic and analytical description of the territory

With a view to achieve

A territorial organization

in economic, juridical, physical and geodesic terms

With a

Scientific view,

to research

economic, juridical, physical and geodesic aspects

Economic, such as in:

Determining the value of a piece of land and its improvements

Juridical, such as in:

Advertising the territorial application of Law

Physical, such as in:

Identifying a piece of land
Surveying and representing a piece of land
Demarcating a piece of land

Geodesic, such as in:

Determining the shape of the Earth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1) All of them, Land Surveying Engineers, Specialist University Teachers of Technological Disciplines, Teachers of the Land Surveying Division of the School of Technology and Applied Sciences of the National University of Catamarca, Maximio Victoria No. 55 (4700) Catamarca – TE (03833) 435112

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