(Per)formación rizomática: encuentros entre tecnologías digitales y profesores en Honduras.

Abstract

Contemporary society is characterized by a strong presence in digital technologies, which determines the realization of a lot of day-to-day activities that an individual makes. This context generates the necessity to promote in the citizens, the abilities of a digital literate, giving the educational institutions, in their different levels, to take on the responsibilities to advance those skills. In the face of this challenge, the teachers in Honduras have been implementing digital technologies in different ways in their pedagogical practices, nevertheless, it has not been clear the structured process that drove them to approach them in the first place. Within this context, this research had the objective of understanding how the emerging flows of the encounters between the desiring machines constituted the Rhizomatic (Per)formation, for the incorporation of the digital technologies in the quotidian of the Honduran teachers. This study has a qualitative imprint, and because of the nature of the object of investigation, it was opted for the cartographic method for data production, and for the selection of the participating teachers in this research, it was conducted at first, a questionnaire as a pre-registration form for a virtual course, data that was processed using a weighted classification of simple criteria, in which those who got the highest scores, showed that they had experience with digital technologies, and were selected to participate in the virtual course. Secondly, a virtual course on Digital Teaching Strategies was developed for the 43 Honduran teachers that were selected, staying only 18 of them in the duration of the complete course. All the interactions that occurred, as well as the creations that were made by the teachers during the totally of the course, were used for data in this research. Lastly, unstructured interviews were made with two of the teachers that participated in the course. The data was analyzed through discursive textual analysis. Among the obtained results, it was evidenced that the Honduran teachers were motivated to approach the digital technologies because of the different virtual and physical encounters that they had experienced in their lives with different technologies, colleagues, friends, etc., which have generated Pedagogical Contagions, contributing for them to advance towards the digital technologies. Another aspect that conditioned the (per)formations process of the teachers, is the perception that they had upon the digital technologies and the level of expertise that their students had compared to their own. These perceptions awakened a desire in them towards a (per)formation process, however, a lot of these perceptions were framed in a technical conception of the technologies, perceiving them only as tools. Finally, another aspect that has influenced the way that the teachers approach the digital technologies, are the formal formation processes, such as the professionalized and the continued education; in the case of the professionalized process, the university offers little expertise with digital technologies to the future professionals; due to this, the main influence is sustained by the continued education, that because of the power of the physical mobility, the information and thought, that contributed to the teachers to pursue and continue their studies in other countries, as well as online courses. Both formational processes, professionalized and continued education, are significantly impregnated by the self-formation process that the teachers must go through and the important role that it has for the constitution of the Rhizomatic (Per)formation and its incorporation to the digital technologies in the quotidian of the Honduran teachers.