Vehicles of significance and transformation of university culture in Latin America

Abstract

This essay is based on the assumption that in order to reform higher education and face the challenges of this change of epoch it is necessary to transform not only teaching practices and organizational structures, but also university culture. So in order to point towards an authentic reform of the university, the analysis and consequent vehicles of meaning proposed by Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan are relevant: the intersubjective environment of university, the art that surrounds university life, the language characterizing teacher discourse, the symbols of university tradition and the persons involved in daily life of university classrooms. From the proposal of the seven complex lessons for the education of the future by Edgar Morin (2001), this work provides a matrix that describes some elements for the transformation of vehicles of meaning needed to change university culture in Latin America and may be useful as a research tool to inquire about these elements.