Why and how to include outreach in higher education curricula. Experience in Cuba

Abstract

Learning and teaching university extension is a challenge for teachers in higher education institutions. The challenge focuses on assuming a curriculum where the teaching, research, and extension processes are integrated. Many authors have addressed the need for including extension in university curricula as a way to reflect training in a variety of educational contexts from academic and popular knowledge exchange in the university-society linkage. This inclusion requires an open, flexible, and integrative curriculum, consistent with contemporary social needs. Implementing this process requires curricular and pedagogical reformulations where spaces are generated for the integration of substantive university processes which both forge links between higher education institutions and their community contexts and encourage students to develop values, skills, expertise, and a more comprehensive and closer-to-society professional training. This research was carried out between 2019 and 2023 in the pedagogical degrees at University of Pinar del Río. It is based on theoretical and empirical methods that allow for the application of instruments to measure the state of the extension inclusion process in Cuban university curricula. This work aims to present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a pedagogical model that contributes to developing the inclusion of extension in Cuban university curricula and its evaluation through experts' criteria.