Internationalization, Extension and Dialogical Construction of Knowledge in Latin America

The main challenge of Latin American higher education institutions is to promote new and better strategies for cooperation, internationalization and university quality, expressing from their identity the mission of doing with other actors, relocating their role as social actors and contributing to reduce the gap between countries. in terms of development. The internationalization of extension services presents the challenge of designing strategies and actions that integrate extension as an exceptional function of the university within the internationalization of higher education institutions. Multiple concepts are associated with the term "extension" and its consideration is somewhat ambiguous. Extension processes and products contribute to the emergence of the comprehensive internationalization of higher education institutions as a response to the neoliberal globalization underway. However, this challenge is complex due to the diversity of concepts and ways of understanding university extension and therefore, of the actions promoted by university institutions. The debate on the definition of extension in universities is also crossed by internationalization from a regional perspective, in view of the dynamics of production and dissemination of knowledge that are generated in the region, establishing a marginal role in the agendas of scientific communities. In this complex and changing context, extension should be considered as a critical and dialogic process that seeks to transcend exclusively technical training and promote an extensionist perspective focused on social transformation. A role that transcends the mere work of the actors in the internationalization processes and that should promote the debate on how the university relates to society within the framework of the co-production of knowledge and collective reflection. The extension proposals in many of the Latin American universities assume a marginal role because they are limited projects in each call, with groups of teachers, and with a conception and dynamics, in many cases, still assistance and knowledge transfer, rather than of collective reflections and dialogic construction of knowledge.