English Version As a pillar of human development, the importance of education for the personal and global development of towns has always been encouraged. For its interdisciplinary character education has the quality to be present in all the activities that the human being makes. In this order, starting from the Greeks, education has had an important use and has also exerted a vital influence in the process of disciplinary, professional and occupational development of the people and, especially, when one has tried to train the trainers.
In this contemporary world characterized by globalization, every day it becomes more and more necessary to qualify the educator - as educator and investigator -- with the object having favorable repercussions in their formation, as well as in their daily academic task. Not only are we looking after the personal development of the educator, but also contibuting in a significant way with the scientific development of the Caribbean region and the country in general. The objective of the program of Masters in Education is to develop basic skills for the investigation that allows the participants to make contributions, conceptual as much as methodological, to the processes and solutions that regard the problematic quality of education in the Caribbean region and country in general.
Specialization
in Pedagogic Processes
The XXI century presents itself with a different point of view of the World which implies a new way of facing such a world. Actually, we are facing an entirely different society, with huge technological and scientific advances, with accelerated changes, where minute by minute knowledge is generated. Situations that demands us to rethink our lives urgently, in the same way, for example, that we have been required to change our philosophy bases, to eliminate economic models that have been valid so far, to make a consensus amongst people to agree on how to exercise a collective leadership and hope for human development of all who inhabit this planet.
Within these processes of change, which are imminent, education plays an ever more important role: what we need more is to teach our students how to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. To form individuals who can respond to the paradigms of the new Century, which have to do with the interphases and the screens, the integral design, labyrinths and complexity.
It is of high-priority to prepare them to face the acceleration of the present society, teaching them to identify their beliefs, qualities, and weaknesses and to teach them the capacity to deal with the crisis that we live in today. But, we need a different education, one that does not center its action in the conformation of the conduct of educating, or worries to offer him all types of knowledge, but instead, that their work is essentially to form the student in superior cognitive processes, that is to say, the development of analysis, syntheses, critique, reflection and argumentation abilities, that will allow them to face the present demands.
In this context, there's no doubt that improving quality of education to a great extent depends on the formation and the improvement of the teaching staff. Only from a suitable and qualified human resource could the changes that the education requires be initiated to serve as strategy, between many others, in the aid to man in the confrontation of the challenges of the new Century.
The Specialization in Pedagogical Processes, tries in a general way to cause in the educational participants a reflection in regards to education, one that generates more suitable and creative ways to educate and specifically to promote pedagogical, theoretical and practical skills in them that will allow them to lead educational innovation processes and can assume their formative task with greater flexibility and continuous opening to change. The objective of the specialization is to provide the professors that participate in the program spaces to develop knowledge and abilities that allow them to qualify the pedagogical processes, and thus to offer an education responding to the changing present.
Specialization in English Education
Ours is a time of expansion without precedents at international level, in all the areas. This development has generated the necessity to adopt a language as an international means of communication; for several reasons, this role has been assigned to the English language. From this phenomenon, a new generation has arisen whose interest for the learning of this language responds to the necessity to gain access to the scientific and cultural heap of the time.
Under this perspective, a new direction of the education of English with a view of satisfying the specific necessities is originated with the students, whether academic, professional or of personal type. This new approach allows us to facilitate the ever growing active participation of our professionals and investigators in the international scientific and economic communities. Before this challenge, the preparation of English teachers becomes necessary with a vision fit to these new exigencies and able to become promotional agents of change in the scope of its professional activity.
Within this frame, the advanced formation of the English professor must integrate the study of three fundamental fields: the linguistic and pedagogic fields and the analysis of the necessities of the students. In order to respond to these necessities, the Language Department of Universidad del Norte offers the program of Specialization in English Education, which aims to prepare the professor to assume his role of investigator in the classroom, designer of didactic materials, evaluator and facilitator of processes within the classroom. This program maintains relations with the English Department of the University of Liverpool, England, by means of an agreement of academic cooperation. The specialization has as key objective to provide the basic foundations of an investigative approach of teaching, which privileges the analysis of the necessities of the pedagogical means in which the specialist develops so that he can become a promotional agent of change and ideas that benefit the scope of their professional activity and the community in general.
Specialization in University Teaching
The improvement of the quality of education occupies an outstanding place in Colombia, and there is no doubt that improvement, to a great extent, depends on the formation and improvement of the teaching staff. The formation of university professors implies much more than knowledge of the discipline, it also requires a necessary pedagogical and practical knowledge to be able to take part in a singular, complex and uncertain reality. As Rodrigo Parra (1988) indicates, "the subjects concerning pedagogy have not been of high-priority in Colombian universities. Pedagogy, in the Colombian school, has been considered something proper to the primary and secondary levels. It seems that at the higher the level of schooling the less importanct pedagogical reflection becomes".
It is peculiar, unlike what happens in primary and secondary teaching, where the professors are expected to be trained in pedagogical practices to become suitable professionals of teaching, university professionals are required to have a post graduate degree in their area of discipline but not necessarily teaching practices. This has been discussed time and time again, however very little has been taken into consideration regarding the pedagocial nature of university teaching.
The specialization in University teaching allows the college professor to improve its pedagogical practice and provides the participants a space to deepen their development as people and teachers, through a reflection process on his educational practice.
