Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the didactic characteristics that prevail in the pedagogic practice of university teachers that work at the Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador (UPEL) of Maracay. The work focuses on the underlying processes of university teachers’ didactic thinking. The sample was made up of five professors (M:1, W:4) from the Departamento de Componente Docente (Department of Educational Component). The design of the research work is naturalistic, with a methodology of a descriptive and interpretive case study. The data was collected by means of in-depth interviews, using audiotapes. From the analysis of the data, categories which define the university teachers’ didactic thinking were constructed. The results show the following: i) three pedagogic styles: the cognitive-intellectual, the humanist-problematizing approach, and the sociocultural; ii) Beliefs and Didactic work is a macro category that comprises University Teachers’ Relational Scenario and Cognitive Questioning, and iii) university teachers’ didactic thinking is based on the integration of their beliefs and is constituted by their ideas, conceptions, opinions, principles and implicit theories about their didactic work. This concept has a wide prospective due to the complexity and subjectivity of the thematic area under study.