Center for Marist Educational Studies and Development
The desire to form, in Chile, Province of Santa Maria de los Andes, a Research Center has been present in many conversations of the Marist teams for many years. However, in 2022 the management team began the elaboration of the research center project, to be presented to the Council of Life and Mission of the Province, who gave the coordination of the initiative to the Executive Secretary of CEIS, Jorge Radic. Thus, in 2023, the Center for Marist Educational Studies and Development (CEDEM) was born.
The objective of CEDEM is to contribute an integral pedagogical proposal, based on the incorporation of the socio-emotional dimension as one of the priority axes of school formation and at the same time to deepen in the challenges, type of learning, evaluative and formative strategies pertinent and relevant for the socio-emotional development of children and young people who are educated in Marist Schools in Chile.
Each year the Center presents its Work Plan in which it defines up to three initiatives to be carried out, which respond to strategic themes of the Sector that will be developed through an annual project competition or by direct invitation, which can achieve continuity and be renewed for more periods.
To begin its work, CEDEM generated two projects in 2023, an experience of Pedagogical innovation in the Marist School of La Pintana, which seeks to systematize innovative experiences that this work has made in information booklets, to allow teachers from other schools to replicate them and on the other hand, the Socioemotional Development Research project.
The project entitled “The socioemotional formation of the students of Marist Schools in Chile” has a proposed duration of three years, where the research team composed of Marcela Román, Claudia González, Ronald GĂĽĂmenez and Juna Pablo Valdivia proposed to contribute in a substantive way to strengthen an integral pedagogical proposal for the schools of the Network, by incorporating the socioemotional dimension as one of the priority axes of Marist formation, seeking to deepen the challenges, types of learning, evaluation and formative strategies that are pertinent and relevant for the socioemotional development of children and young people.
During the first year in 2023, the project focused on bibliographical research on the subject and what was being done in Marist schools through a series of workshops with rectors, directors, psychologists, teachers, parents and students, as well as the results obtained.
This second year, on the other hand, the aim is to work on a socioemotional curricular proposal at sector level, which will be elaborated from the inputs obtained in the previous stage, which generated a report and the application of an emotional evaluation instrument focused on defining Marist needs, which will culminate during 2025 in a proposal for teacher training.
This training will have objectives to be met, examples of good treatment to be followed, seeking to prioritize the socioemotional in the classroom and not only focus the teaching work on academic results.
CEDEM seeks to incorporate all the areas of the Marist fields in its investigations, hoping to be a proposal that allows to deliver a better integral education to the students that day by day are educated under the wing of the Marist Charism.