The plot of the curricular change in the universities: A reconstruction of biology and physics in Uruguay at the end of the 20th century

Abstract

Focused on curriculum studies within the higher education (HE) field of knowledge, this paper aims to analyze and discuss factors and processes that operate in curricular changes at the university level. We start from conceiving the curriculum critically, as a result of power struggles and disputes where some actors gain ground and others lose it, and frame ourselves in the organizational perspective of the HE to investigate the institutional and disciplinary elements that weave the plot of these processes. We focused on the study of the case of bachelor courses in Biology and Physics in Uruguay between 1985 and 1995. Throughout the investigated decade, two curricular changes took place in the analyzed disciplines, anchored in two different Faculties of the same university. In regional, national and local frameworks, the joint effect of the institutional arena and the evolution of the disciplines in question gave these processes of change different and particular features. Thus, incremental changes were taking place, which consolidated certain sectors in power, bearing a particular vision of training in these areas of knowledge.