Think ahead Mar del Plata as “city of programmers”: A social-historical perspective at technical schools specialized in computer science

Abstract

This research advance focuses on THE reflection on / IN the relationships (relashionship) between education, technology and work on the compu deter (computer) sector. Its purpose is to investigate this plot through the analysis of Mar del Plata’s technical schools, specifically the creation at the end of the 90s of the computer science orientation in one of the five schools of this type in the city. Based on the historical-social reconstruction of this process, we approach a scheme that displays various objectives: on the one hand, it allows us to rethink educational policies aimed at training technical school students with new technological capabilities, and on the other, to link this process with the idea of the city of Mar del Plata as a "city of programmers" in labor-productive key. In this configuration, and taking into account the development of computing in Argentina during the 1990s, the following work responds to an approach that links an educational and a socio-historical  perspective built from a detailed survey that counted with the investigation of the administrative file of the school, conducting in-depth interviews with the actors involved in that process and detailed analysis of regulations and national and provincial public documentation on the subject. Among some of the questions formulated by this research advance, the following can be pointed out: How are issues of technological employability thought from school training? Can people be educated for work in the fast-paced and ever-changing IT industry? How did phenomena at ground level, like our case, dialogue with economic, science and technology, and technical education policies in the Argentine neoliberal decade?