The paper describes the findings of study aimed at identifying the goals of Latin American and Caribbean education in the early years of the 21st century. The use of the comparative method, on which this study was based, supported by other methods of the theoretical level, such as analysis-synthesis, induction-deduction, and documentary analysis made possible the fulfillment of the pursued objective. The main sources of information were documents related to educational legislation in 16 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, promulgated or updated between 1991 and 2016. The findings lead to conclude that theeducation goals of Latin America and the Caribbean are expressed from two general perspectives: 1) as the "expectations that educating individuals must turn into reality as personal development (hominization), a coherent relationship with the human social environment in which it develops (socialization), and the development of its capacity to create culture and to live within a cultural environment and; b) as "strategic contributions that education must do "to contribute to the improvement of society, in a specific socio-historical context. Accordingly, it became evident that education attempts to achieve a larger pertinencein facing current challenges in the context of a globalized world.

For learning any language, it is highly important, among other things, the mastery of vocabulary items, which allows the person to communicate ideas s/he needs to, as well as to understand both the oral and written language. This becomes more necessary when it comes to a foreign language, where not only the lexical system is unfamiliar, but also the phonological and the grammatical. The work herein presented aims to offer a didactic sequence concerning the treatment of the English vocabulary for trainee teachers of that language from a professionalized perspective, departing from some reflections and facts on its teaching. For such a purpose, the authors have used, among others, methods like observation and bibliographical search to verify the theoretical and methodological deficiencies concerning vocabulary teaching and learning in the context alluded.

The stimulation of the verbal talent is an epistemological problem that generates difficulties in the related educational strategies. Therefore, the author devises a pedagogical framework of the process comprising a definition for verbal talent, its corresponding levels of education, the related characteristics of Cuban primary student, the outline of premises conditioning the stimulating process and explains the principle of pedagogical combining speeding and enrichment, together with a resulting teaching strategy. By means of a case study and a longitudinal approach, the author monitored the results of sample of Cuban schoolchildren between 2007 and 2013. The findings contribute to the theory of pedagogy by interpreting qualitative evidence collected at repeating assessment tools and its critical evaluation by expert members of the scientific community. Likewise, a significant result was the improvement of the process of educating teacher trainees for the diagnosis, stimulation and assessment of talent.

The paper describes the findings of a research intended to foster the communicative competence of first year students of bachelors in Education and Language Teaching. The study of the bibliography allows the construction of a framework related to the integration of knowledge, by examining documents it was possible to establish the integrative nucleus, and modeling allows the design of the proposal, whereas the procedures of the action-research approach lead the practical introduction of the proposal and con trolling its results. The paper offers the integrative nucleus for communicative competence training, the definition and proposition of comprehensive lesson needed to pursue it and the impact of the proposal on a sample of students with low levels of communicative competence.

Reading and writing in the university context need a coherent didactic direction that contributes to the student comprehensive education. The article offers some components for a didactics for reading and writing, based on the integration of the afore mentioned components of verbal activity, that share the base knowledge, taking into account the relations between comprehension and producti on stated as a constellation of interrelated processes. The methods used allowed the systematization of basic elements to structure the didactics. An operational model for reading and writing was also introduced. Its practical implementation evidenced higher levels in reading and writing performance of the students.

To learn how to live together, besides being one of the objectives of all educational systems, is considered as one of the fundamental challenges of the education in the 21st century. For this reason, studing students problems and conflicts at educational institutions and developing possible solutions or preventing them has become a focus of attention of any educational community. According to this, the UNESCO (2008) has pointed out that the enormous affective lacks of children, as well as the presence of innefective models of communication, have motivated professionals to rely on ethic education and social abilities. This article is aimed at devising and educational strategy of family counseling to face affective lacks. The research starts by constructing a framework and collecting information leading to the identification of ecudorian affective lacks and the procedures for family counseling. The findings is an strategy tailored to meet the counseling need of community families

Teachers’ education requires a high level of development of professional competencies. However, the academic component is usually predominant in such approaches that favor the learning of the language structure, its corresponding theory and drilling to fix knowledge of this theory. This paper aims at devising a didactic strategy focusing a professional approach to Linguistic Studies of the English Language. The study starts by constructing a theoretical framework to turn linguistic research methods, first, into language learning tools and then into teaching tools. Teacher trainees’ lessons were supervised to evaluate the achievement of such a conversion. The main finding is the devised strategy

The major in English Language was inaugurated in 2005 in the University of Camagüey, starting with the improved Syllabus “C”. Prevailing conditions in the Cuban economy cause that literature for teaching the vast number of students in higher education to become a critical issue for the teaching-learning process. Nonetheless, with the ever-increasing existence of computers, laptops, and tablets, he number of computer labs in schools, and the Youth Computer Clubs in neighborhoods, to provide computer products for independent study is one of the solutions to the aforementioned problem of literature. Out of this reality, there emerged the idea of developing a computer program as a teaching aid for the subject History of the English Speaking People (Great Britain), which will not only offer the contents for studying but also exercises to help assimilate these contents. The program was used in the second semester of the 15-16 school term with good results as exposed in this paper.

To develop student reading competence impliesexploring what they know to do with language while facing the process of reading. Text comprehension involves the use of different strategies to become competent readers. This process presupposes questioning the text and anticipating possible interpretations. This paper aims at devising a teaching distinguishing before, during and after reading activities to overcome students’ shortcomings in text comprehension. The research was carried out by systematizing experiences, focusing on teaching practice and observation. The main finding is the devised strategy.

This paper describes freshmen’s limitations in the command of socio-cultural term. These shortcomings constitute a barrier for an efficient communication in the foreign language of teacher’s trainees of English, particularly in the discipline History of the Culture of Anglophone Peoples from the third year on. Departing from systematized course experience, new ways to approach foreign culture study are explored enhancing the acquisition of the associated metalanguage from the first years of the initial training. Thus, the Panorama of the Culture of Anglophone Countries course was designed. Its conception lies on the task-based approach from the didactic point of view and the use of a glossary, which favored the use of specialized vocabulary and the development of the student sociocultural competence.

The new socio-economic context of the 21st century set new challenges to museums, among them to become interactive institutions in the community, meeting the expectations of the public and giving support to school education. Such goals demands specialists working at the museums a sound cultural background and communicative competence in their professional environment and performance. Both, culture and communicative skills have a positive effect in the relation with visitors. The study starts by the construction of a theoretical framework describing and ideal model of museum specialists’ continuing education; by monitoring specialists’ professional performance and making surveys and interviews current specialists’ communicative competence and cultural background was accessed. The findings provide an insight of the actual level of professional capacities and need of training of that specialists.

This paper aims to propose a management model of postgraduate activity to favor regional development. The researcher is providing the components of the model and their corresponding functions by using the functional structura l systemic method. The model consists of three subsystems and was successfully introduced while organizing Manabí Polytechnic and agricultural university. The components of each subsystem are fully described, the intention is to set the guidelines for coordinating local universities efforts to impact on regional development.