Abstract:
The creation of a chair or university programme is a time in the institutionalization of a professional field when certain practices are defined as specific, they are also regularized; and their autonomy and legitimacy are built. From such a perspective, this paper aims to historically reconstruct the origin of the Teacher Training Programme of Biology at the National University of San Luis (UNSL) in relation to the constitution of the disciplinary-academic field, the training of teachers, and the gradual expansion of secondary schooling. The underlying intention is to capture the uniqueness of the social and institutional processes at stake. The analysis of the information, obtained from document study and interviews with key players, reveals a convergence of events and circumstances that created the conditions for the emergence of the Teacher Training Programme of Biology. Some of them are: the foundational matrix of university studies in San Luis -which focused on the training of secondary teachers; the growing disciplinary specificity of Biology in the context of Natural and Exact Sciences - where power struggles for authority and scientific legitimacy were not absent; the progressive change in the organizational and academic structure of the UNSL - due to the Peronist influence that enabled the creation of the Department of Natural Sciences and the formation of a specialized teaching staff, with professionals from Chile, Cordoba and Rio IV.