2nd September 2015
On Monday, 31st August the first session of a distance learning programme took place which, under he name “Virtual Pedagogic Approach and Action Research Forum for Territorial Development (EPIA)”, attempts to make advances in the construction of a network of enablers for territorial development in Latin America.
The team of enablers from the Forum include Miren Larrea (Researcher at Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness), Pablo Costamagna (Lecturer, Researcher and Enabler – Coordinator of the ConectaDEL Programme and collaborator of the Zubigintza project that Orkestra is coordinating), Mónica Muñoz (person in charge of communication for the ConectaDEL Programme), Eleonora Spinelli (Coordinator of the Pedagogic Approach for the ConectaDEL Programme) and Ana Victoria Peláez Ponce (Researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research at Rafael Landívar University and member of the Central American Network in Knowledge Management for Territorial Economic Development - CODET Network).
This first forum involves eleven participants who mostly carry out their activity in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Spain and Panama. Most of them work at universities and research centres that pursue initiatives in the field of territorial development.
At the end of the forum it is hoped that each participant will submit a brief document containing some critical thought about their own practice and will act as an enabler in one of the core areas into which the forum has been divided, in such a way that new knowledge to help enrich the EPIA approach may be constructed via the exchange of conceptual or practical contributions.
The eight core themes are as follows:
- Building capacities
- Shared strategy and new action frameworks
- Innovation in training and research
- The researcher/lecturer as a player in the territory
- Building spaces for dialogue in order to cogenerate collective knowledge
- Definition of roles and interactions: the social researcher, the educator, the reflexive player, the enabler
- Communication and systematisation
- Transformation of organisations for training and research purposes
The virtual campus at the National Technological University – Rafaela Regional Faculty – will be used to set the forum in motion. This is an institution with which Orkestra maintains a collaborative agreement that has enabled a series of initiatives to be set in motion regarding territorial development, including this forum.
