A Critical Reading of the “Educational” Neo-language of Competences:  The Case of Colombia

Felipe  Cárdenas-Támara; Johanna  Choconta Bejarano

doi:10.14288/ce.v16i2.186922

A Critical Reading of the “Educational” Neo-language of Competences

The Case of Colombia

Authors

Felipe Cárdenas-Támara Universidad de La Sabana
Johanna Choconta Bejarano Universidad de La Sabana

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v16i2.186922

Keywords:

dominant discourse in education, neo-liberalism and education, competencies, dominant interpretative discourse, competency-based education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand, from a critical point of view, the condition of semantic, discursive, and rhetorical displacement operating in Colombian educational system, where the category of education has been displaced by the concept of competence. The following question guides the inquiry: What are the profound meanings from semiotic considerations and from the analysis of the discourse that underlie the rationality of competences as a category inserted in the discourse of the Ministry of National Education of Colombia (MEN)? The investigation confirms that the Colombian educational system has been steered, since 2004 through the Álvaro Uribe Vélez neoliberal government, by an instrumental and economistic conception of education, whose logic is marked by the notions of "efficiency", "competence", “outcomes” and "success" as categories indicative of the training horizon promoted by the Colombian state. We argue that the pragmatic outcome is an institutional isomorphism that will nullify and come into conflict with the country's cultural and regional diversity.

Author Biographies

Felipe Cárdenas-Támara, Universidad de La Sabana

Felipe Cárdenas Támara is a Colombian anthropologist and homeopath with more than 30 years of experience in environmental issues, popular education, medical applied anthropology and discourse analysis. His passions are semiotic anthropology, the study of dominant discourses and rural development from an environmental perspective. He has worked with indigenous groups, Afrodescendants and urban popular sectors.

Johanna Choconta Bejarano , Universidad de La Sabana

Johanna Choconta Bejarano is a Colombian educator with experience in the training of early childhood educators. Her areas of study are child development, narratives and pedagogy. She has worked on these topics at undergraduate and master's level and with teachers in indigenous communities in La Guajira.

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Published

2025-04-30

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2025)

Section

Articles

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