Researcher competencies in the XXI century. A requirement of higher education

Abstract

The university training of competitive researchers is currently a complex challenge to face; This is due, in part, to the difficulties experienced by participants at this level, who are faced with a wealth of diverse information from dissimilar sources, whose positions seek to explain in a particular way a reality permeated by change, dynamism and recurring transformation. Faced with this panorama, developing research competencies implies, among other things, generating real experiences in which the student, through accompaniment, appropriates strategies and techniques of their discipline, but more importantly, understands the process of approaching social phenomena and accumulated knowledge from an active attitude, which leads him to operate progressively and systematically with mental independence, autonomy and critical sense, as requirements to produce valid contributions that can be recognized by scientific communities as determinants of the progressiveness of the knowledge. In view of the above, this essay identifies the competences that the researcher must integrate into his or her praxis, among which are: the rigorous search for the truth, the critical review of knowledge, management of the methodological instruments to organize individual work routes and collective, ethical procedure in the use of data, ability to propose alternative solutions to social problems and generation of theoretical and practical contributions that elevate the human condition and guarantee comprehensive well-being. It is concluded that the training in research competences requires its integration not only as a transversal axis of the study programs, but as an underlying praxis in all subjects, in order to facilitate the researcher to become familiar with study situations, methods and activities of their discipline, encouraging their active participation in the work carried out by academic communities.