MULTIDISCIPLINARY TRAINING PROGRAM FOR TEACHERS IN THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO. CASE STUDY

We report on the work experience of a multidisciplinary training program for teachers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, the best and largest university in Mexico, with 330,000 students, 40,000 academics, 25 campuses in the country and in the United States, Canada and Spain. The UNAM produces the largest number of graduates bachelors, undergraduate and graduate students and more than half of the country's scientific research, and increased cultural diffusion in Mexico. In this context we report the case of a program of 40 courses in 2011 and 2012, for multidisciplinary training and participation of UNAM's teachers from all educational levels, in one course to provoke interaction between precollege teachers, undergraduate, master's degree, and doctorate. We present planning and management strategies to organize courses on Saturdays to achieve wider participation in the course: "Contextos y pretextos de los minerales en Mexico" (Contexts and pretexts of Mexico's minerals), with the coordination of four teachers: a chemical, a geographer, a historian and an pedagogue, all of them with graduate studies. It shows the level of education and training of participating "students", all experienced teachers with many years of specialization and graduate studies. The paper also shows the issues and development of each of the ten sessions of the course, the various stages where it occurred: auditoriums, museums and classrooms in different facilities of UNAM. At the end it shows the results, feedback and course evaluation by participants. The completed work was an undergraduate thesis.