Situated Teaching and Democratization of Tertiary Education. A Framework for Practices

In the last few years the experiences of ‘participatory’ and ‘situated’ teaching and research conducted in the classrooms of the universities have multiplied. These experiences involve students, researchers, social workers and citizens with a view to carrying out and sharing a process of democratization of knowledge resulting from negotiation and enhancement of different perspectives. These actions aim at developing social change while taking students close to people who are usually distant, towards inaccessible stories and places. This work indicates some of the theoretical and contextual assumptions in which the dimension of participation joins the academic world, offering examples of field experiences carried out in recently developed areas of tertiary education, and defining the main devices of action, including several forms of ‘co-teaching’ (shared teaching with ‘experts by experience’).