Power struggle in the restructuring of the graduate program in pedagogy, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 1996-1998

Abstract

This work was elaborated as a product of a broader investigation, where one of the objectives of the investigation was to reconstruct and comprehend the process of academic integration experienced by academics, postgraduate professors from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL), the Center of Studies on the University (today IISUE) and the National School of Professional Studies Aragón (today FES Aragón), all academic entities of the National Autonomous College of Mexico (UNAM), in the creation of the Postgraduate One Program in Pedagogy as a consequence of the reform's provisions to the General Regulations for Postgraduate Studies of 1996.
A semi-structured interview was conducted as a methodological device to approach key informants, members of the 1997-98 Postgraduate Restructuring Committee, and members of the Academic Committee, who would help me to reconstruct the history of the creation of UNAM's Postgraduate One Program in Pedagogy, its objectives, guidelines, orientations, participants, strategies, central ideas, conflicts, positions, agreements, disagreements, etc.
The reconstruction of the reform process required identifying and describing the framework of the relations that interweaved during this period, and that allows us to build and rebuild the process of change, based on the academic's experience and story. This process is analyzed from the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory for the power struggle that the protagonists face. Analyzes the elements which permit their incorporation to the field, the abilities brought into play to position inside the Restructuring Committee and the power dispute for belonging and conforming the new Postgraduate Program; a process of rivalry reform, knowledge, and ignorance between their participants, where it can finally be revealed how the correlation of forces in the academic integration process changed.
The study started from the assumption that the institutional intentions of the 1996 postgraduate reform were one thing, regarding the integration of entities with related fields of knowledge with the purpose of potentiating resources, specifically enriching the academic establishment, through its permanent interaction between schools, faculties, centers, and research institutes; and how they assumed it, how they understood it and what implications the articulation of these academic entities had.