Los valores en la obra de Inés María Mendoza RiveraVigencia de su discurso en la educación contemporánea

Abstract

In this research, we studied Professor Inés María Mendoza Rivera, one of the leading educators in the defense of language, education, and social justice of Puerto Ricans. Her work began in the 1930s and extended until the 1980s. Through her work, she contributed to Puerto Rican public education in the mid-20th century, a period of important advances in our public system. We are concerned on what basis public education is sustained in Puerto Rico and we are exposed by what might be the guide that, in the Puerto Rican context, will facilitate us to strengthen teaching in values. Faced with this concern, we are studying an educator who endorses the values that the Puerto Rican people need to rescue. The research problem is framed on the crisis of values of the contemporary Puerto Rican society and the reliability of Professor Inés María Mendoza discourse. The extraordinary situations that Puerto Rico has faced in recent years have created a crisis of values in our society. The loss of values of our citizens makes us question who must respond and seek solutions to the problem thus promoting healthy coexistence. Through this research “Los valores en la obra de Inés María Mendoza Rivera: vigencia de su discurso en la educación contemporánea” we raised the problem of establishing Professor Mendoza’s values category by analyzing the validity of her discourse in the contemporary education. The research is structured in two parts. In the first, an approximation of the research problem is made and is theoretically established. In this, we set out the justification taking as a starting point the crisis of the Puerto Rican education system, highlighting an educator who contributed to the advancement of Puerto Rican public education in the middle of the 20th century. As noted above, the research problem is framed in the crisis of values of the Puerto Rican society and the importance of studying the work of Professor Inés María Mendoza. In addition, we designed a general objective and specific objectives with their corresponding research questions. The second part of the work presents the methodology and the research results, as well as the conclusions, implications, and recommendations of the study. In this section, we describe the analytical method implemented. In our case, we used the analysis of content of quantitative nature technique (Krippendorff, 1990), applied to an 18-written examples of Professor Mendoza's epistolary and narrative discourse. The sample is selected from the epistolary discourses collected in: Sra. Inés María Mendoza y la batalla del lenguaje, Cartas 1937-1938 and Inventario de cosas perdidas: Artículos y discursos de la profesora Inés María Mendoza. As an analytical method we use the analysis of axiological content that allows us breaking down the texts and analyze them in a broader mode, taking care of compliance with fundamental requirements such as objectivity, systematic, generalization, quantification and level of content beyond the verbatim text. Through this methodology, we investigate the frequency of word occurrence to create an axiological category of values. We analyze the results related to the meta-categories, subphases and axiological temporal phases of the Hall- Tonna model, as well as the crossing of the different discourses studied. As the final part of the study, we presented the conclusions, recommendations and specify the educational implications based on the results obtained and their connection with Professor Inés María Mendoza Rivera. We expect that the findings of the study will promote new lines of research in values and saving Professor Mendoza's contribution to Puerto Rican education.