Abstract:
Throughout its thirty years of operation, Mexico's TV-based educational program, Telesecundaria, has been hailed as an innovative and well-managed program, geared to the poor. This article describes what Telesecundaria is, how it works, what it costs, and why it is successful.
The main characteristics of Telesecundaria are:
- the use of a single television to carry most of the teaching load, and
- utilizing one teacher to cover all subjects, rather than the subject matter specialists used in general secondary schools.
Telesecundaria is used to provide rural communities with access to education. Students go to a school within their community for 5 - 6 hours per day where their classes are led by the television screen. There is a teacher/tutor in the classroom that manages the class, but does not necessarily prepare lessons. Student listen to lectures and are provided with workbooks and activities that follow-up the lesson that has been given via television.
Typically, the first session starts at 8 am and goes to 2 pm and the second session starts at 2 pm and goes until 8 pm. Recordings of the programs are expected to last 5 to 10 years.
Critique & Questions:
- It is a cost-effective program that benefits rural environments
- students only have one teacher that they are often close to and the quality of lessons coupled with the local involvement in the programs encourages retention
- Although, the student may be able to build a relationship with the tutor/teacher in the actual classroom, they are still disconnected from their actual teacher that appears on the television set
- if the in-person classroom teacher has not been given the appropriate training in the subject being taught (which is probably the case since this is not the teacher that is teaching the subject) then it makes it difficult for students who have questions about the lesson to get a detailed explanation
- Therefore, an interaction process between the student and teacher is missing
- if the "television" programs were replaced with a web-based system then this may allow for programs or parts of programs to be repeated (in case students didn't understand a section) and will also allow for the programs to be paused if necessary.
- a web-based application may also allow for more student and teacher interaction as questions and answers may be better facilitated.