Resumen

LA ROSA, Domingo  y  BUSTAMANTE, Harrison. Spatial metropolization of Maracay 1940-2007: A pedagogical proposal. Paradígma [online]. 2009, vol.30, n.1, pp.207-225. ISSN 1011-2251.

Within the teaching and learning context that demands an integral education and knowledge integration, this article presents the results of a pedagogic experience developed with secondary education students from 9th grade in the course of Venezuelan Geography in Maracay, Aragua state. From geohistory as a central perspective for analysis, the main objective is to conduct a research on Maracay Spatial Metropolization (1940-2007). An aptitude to set and analyze community problems related to the city, the region and the country is recognized through the educational (language and previous knowledge) and socioeconomic (social reality and responsibility towards it) diagnosis and fieldwork. Reality-thinking confrontation, collection and time-spatial interpretation, as well as the use of statements derived from the students’ context, needs, problems and interests, are the framework of a pedagogical praxis based on knowing-doing-living. These three aspects guide strategies and procedures in lesson planning to identify geohistoric relations that explain its presence in the specific spatial context. The geographic chart synthesis is an approximation to Maracay city behaviour in a specific historic period. Its constituting elements are the fabric structure for the diagnosis and the syncronicdiacronic process where interdisciplinary views prevail in the teaching of Venezuelan Geography through the framework of a social dimension that clearly provides the reality to think, to feel, to do and to be, as stated in Article 3 of the Education Law (1980). The results can be applied outside the school context to organize forums, lectures and workshops in order to democratize knowledge and consolidate the school as the center of community work from a regional and national vision.

Palabras clave : Geohistory; Geography teaching; spatial metropolization; social space; praxis.