The systematization of reflective practice: meanings and experiences from teaching praxis in early childhood education

Introduction

Improving educational quality stands as a global imperative, particularly pressing in Latin America and the Caribbean, where gaps in learning results persist (Gatica & Valenzuela, 2025). In this scenario, pedagogical support has been positioned as a core strategy of professional development policies, conceived as a bridge between the prescribed curriculum and its implementation in the classroom (Ravela, 2022).

According to the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (MINERD, 2021), the purpose of this practice transcends the verification of regulatory compliance, focusing on the sustained improvement of teaching and learning processes through support, guidance and collaboration with teachers. However, the mere act of accompanying does not guarantee, by itself, a profound transformation of educational practice. When this process is reduced to an administrative ritual, devoid of a genuinely formative purpose, there is a risk of perpetuating a superficial practice that does not promote the systematization of reflection on pedagogical practice.

The problem that this research addresses is located at the intersection between continuing training policy and daily experience. On the one hand, there is a consensus in the literature about the potential of accompaniment to energize reflection and strengthen teaching practice (Escobar Orozco, 2025; Montes-Serrano, 2023; Rodríguez-Castro, 2024). On the other hand, regional empirical evidence, including the Dominican one, reveals an unsystematic implementation, marked by perceptions of verticalism, distrust and low real impact on teaching competencies (Galán, 2017; Lara-Alcántara & Pons-Peguero, 2025; Vásquez et al., 2019). This gap is not merely operational; it responds to a paradigmatic technical-instrumental matrix that conceives the teacher as an executor of guidelines and not as an autonomous and reflective professional.

This study does not question the value of accompaniment as a context, but rather critically analyzes the conditions that prevent a systematic reflective practice from emerging in it, capable of transforming praxis. Faced with this reality, reflective practice ceases to be a desirable methodological option and becomes an epistemological and ethical necessity. Reflection, understood as the critical and systematic examination of one's own action to understand and transform it (Agreda Reyes & Pérez Azahuanches, 2020), constitutes the central mechanism to move from the mechanical application of protocols towards a grounded professional agency.

The concept of reflective practice, rooted in the works of Dewey and Schön, has been extensively reworked in the Ibero-American pedagogical field. Domingo (2021) defines it as a cyclical process of inquiry that allows the teacher to deconstruct their tacit assumptions. However, the reflective act, to be genuinely formative, cannot be an isolated episode or a final appendix; it must be systematized. The systematization of reflective practice involves the recovery, critical analysis and theorization of experience, turning it into communicable and transferable professional knowledge. As Soriano Beltré and Pérez González (2025) point out, critical reflection is the catalyst that transforms experience into situated pedagogical knowledge. In early education contexts, where interaction and didactic sensitivity are central, systematizing reflection is vital to make learning and decision-making processes visible.

Pedagogical support, to transcend its merely administrative function, must be anchored in a solid theoretical framework that conceives it as a dialogic and transformative process. From a philosophical perspective, it is based on phenomenology and hermeneutics, which emphasize the understanding of lived experience and the intersubjective construction of meanings (Arboleda, 2022; García Naranjo, 2024; Osiris Gómez, 2019). The companion is not an external and neutral observer, but a co-participant in a process of interpretation of the practice, where reflective dialogue is the tool to reveal the tacit assumptions that guide the teacher's action (Agreda Reyes & Pérez Azahuanches, 2020). This approach is opposed to positivist paradigms that seek the application of universal recipes, proposing instead a logic of situated inquiry.

The sociological substrate is provided by the theories of situated learning and communities of practice (Liriano López, 2023; Osiris Gómez, 2019). Professional development does not occur in a vacuum, but in legitimate peripheral participation within a community, where knowledge is socially constructed (Álvarez Cisternas, 2025; Guerra Suárez & Espindola Artola, 2021). Accompaniment, from this perspective, must facilitate the negotiation of meanings and the progressive assumption of greater levels of responsibility and agency by the teacher within their professional community (Matos Ramírez, 2025). Support that isolates the teacher or places him in a position of deficiency perpetuates his marginality.

Sociocultural psychology provides the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1987). The reflective companion acts as a "more capable other" who, through scaffolding, does not provide solutions, but rather formulates powerful questions, offers resources and creates conditions for the teacher to build their own understandings (Díaz Reyes, 2024; Escobar Orozco, 2025; Rodríguez et al., 2008). Reflection is the internal process through which the teacher reconfigures his or her mental schemas (Matos Ramírez, 2025). Agreda Reyes and Pérez Azahuanches (2020) go deeper with the distinction between "reflection in action" and "reflection on action." Effective support must promote both.

From pedagogy and didactics, reflective accompaniment is aligned with models of action research and deliberative practice. The teacher is conceived as a researcher in and of his or her own practice (Peralta-Castro & Mayoral-Valdivia, 2022). Observation instruments are not checklists for grading, but rather heuristic tools that provide evidence for joint analytical dialogue (Soriano Beltré & Pérez González, 2025). These foundations lead to an integrative operational definition: reflective pedagogical accompaniment is a systematic, collaborative and contextualized process, where a more experienced peer facilitates, through egalitarian and evidence-based dialogue, cycles of reflection (in, on and for action), in order to empower the teacher to develop critical consciousness, professional autonomy and grounded didactic innovations.

These postulates define the indicators to assess the quality of the process: horizontality in the relationship (López & Marcelo, 2021), use of evidence as a basis for dialogue (Agreda Reyes & Pérez Azahuanches, 2020), primacy of the reflective question over prescription (Matos Ramírez, 2025), focus on learning (Soriano Beltré & Pérez González, 2025), and generation of commitments inquiry by the teacher (Peralta-Castro & Mayoral-Valdivia, 2022).

The present investigation is, therefore, in the analysis of this gap. The objective is to reveal meanings and experiences of early education teachers around the systematization of reflective practice within the framework of pedagogical support.

Methods

The research was part of the qualitative paradigm, assuming a hermeneutic-interpretive approach (García Naranjo, 2024). The choice of this approach responds to the interest in understanding in depth the subjective meanings that teachers construct in their interaction with reflective practice in the context of accompaniment. From this perspective, the interpretive strategy was guided by the hermeneutic circle, that is, a dialogic movement between the parts (individual stories, normative artifacts) and the whole (the institutional context and theories of reflective practice), in order to reveal the tensions between the discourse, the norm and the lived experience.

A descriptive multiple case study design was adopted, focused on the meanings and experiences of eight initial level teachers belonging to three schools in educational districts 03, 05 and 06 of Educational Regional 02 of San Juan de la Maguana, in the Dominican Republic. This selection was based on the need to delve into the complexity of the phenomenon, prioritizing the richness and density of the data over statistical generalization.

The research methods used to collect empirical data were three, applied in a complementary manner to guarantee methodological and source triangulation:

1) Individual interview with initial level teachers. The interview guide was structured in six dimensions: professional experience, meanings of accompaniment, experiences of reflective practice, systematization of reflection, transformation of praxis and proposals for improvement. It included in-depth questions to capture nuances in the narratives.

2) Checklist on the pedagogical support process, completed individually by each teacher. This instrument, constructed ad hoc, consisted of seven items with dichotomous options (yes/no) that investigated the presence of reflection records, identification of strengths and opportunities for improvement, proposal of concrete actions, follow-up to agreements, evidence of changes and systematization of reflections in their institutional experience. The list was subjected to a validation process through the judgment of three experts in initial education and pedagogical support, who evaluated the relevance and clarity of the items; it was subsequently applied to a pilot group of two teachers with similar characteristics to the sample to adjust the wording. Its purpose was to contrast general perceptions with stated practices in a structured way. The results were analyzed disaggregated by item, identifying patterns of consensus and divergence.

It is worth mentioning that the inclusion of a checklist in a hermeneutic-interpretive design does not respond to a positivist logic, but rather was used as a contrast device to triangulate the declared practice with the narrated experience and with the normative frameworks. This articulation is justified by the need to understand the phenomenon from multiple angles, without seeking statistical measurement.

3) Documentary analysis of the official accompaniment instruments. A categorical content analysis was carried out on the ten official pedagogical support instruments for the Initial Level, approved and in use by the General Directorate of Initial Education of the MINERD. The documents analyzed were: (1) accompanying self-assessment instrument; (2) Aspects of Teacher Pedagogical Management; (3) Instrument for Observation of the Classroom Environment; (4) Group Meeting Observation Instrument; (5) Play Work Observation Instrument; (6) Large and Small Group Observation Instrument; (7) Group Activity Observation Instrument; (8) Organization and Dismissal Observation Instrument; (9) Planning and Evaluation Observation Instrument; (10) Accompaniment Instrument for the intervention of the Educator and/or Teacher of the Initial Level with families.

The documentary analysis procedure was developed in three phases:

• First, a segmentation of the items of each instrument was carried out, identifying units of analysis relevant to the predefined categories.
• Second, a codebook built from the theoretical framework was applied, with the following categories: (a) nature of the items (compliance verification / promotion of reflection); (b) role assigned to the teacher (object of evaluation / active agent); (c) spaces for reflection and systematization (presence of reflective questions, dialogue protocols or agreements/goals sections); and (d) implicit paradigmatic approach (technical, practical or critical). For example, the item "The teacher complies with the established dismissal time" of the Organization and Dismissal Instrument was coded as technical verification, passive role and technical approach; while the open questions of the self-assessment instrument of the companion ("How did I feel?", "What type of help do I require?") were coded as promotion of reflection, although directed at the companion, not the teacher.
• Third, an interpretive synthesis was developed that allowed the documentary findings to be contrasted with the teaching narratives and the responses from the checklist. To ensure confirmability, all coding decisions were documented and reviewed by an external researcher with experience in qualitative analysis.

The ethical aspects considered included: written informed consent from all participants, guarantee of confidentiality and anonymity through codes (D1 to D8), return of the findings for participatory validation, and approval of the study by the corresponding educational authorities. Furthermore, an explicit reflective stance was adopted: the researcher is a professor at INAFOCAM, an institution linked to teacher training, which required permanent control of possible biases. To do this, an external audit of the analytical process was used and the interpretations were compared with the participants, as a communicative validation mechanism.

The analysis of the information was carried out in three phases:

1) Analysis of narratives: The interviews were transcribed and subjected to an open coding process, followed by axial coding that allowed the codes to be grouped into emerging categories: "ambivalent conception of accompaniment", "reflection as technical self-assessment", "incipient and dependent systematization", "adaptive changes / critical reconstruction" and "contradictory institutional conditions". This analysis was carried out manually, with the support of contrast matrices, and a thematic coding approach was used based on the principles of grounded theory, but without seeking the generation of a substantive theory, but rather the identification of patterns of meaning in the interpretive framework.

2) Analysis of the checklist: The responses were examined disaggregated by item, identifying patterns of consensus and divergence. This analysis allowed us to detect nuances that a global view would have hidden; for example, not all items obtained unanimity, which was relevant for triangulation.

3) Document analysis: The procedure described above was applied, the result of which was integrated into the discussion to contrast the normative matrix with the teaching experience.

The triangulation of instruments (interview, checklist and official documents) and teaching voices strengthened the credibility of the findings. The analysis indicators, aligned with the objective, were: degree of internalization of the foundations of reflective accompaniment; nature of the experiences lived; perceived impact on professional skills; facilitating and hindering factors of systematization; and coherence between teaching discourse, declared practice and the regulatory framework.

To guarantee methodological rigor, the following criteria were adopted (Lincoln & Guba, 1985):

• Credibility: triangulation of sources (eight teachers), instruments (interview, checklist and documentary analysis) was carried out, and a verification strategy was applied with the participants by returning the preliminary findings to confirm the interpretation.
• Dependency: a detailed record of analytical decisions and emerging codes was maintained, and an external audit was performed by a researcher with experience in qualitative methodology. Document analysis was also the subject of this audit.
• Confirmability: transcripts, coding matrices, and the record of documentary analysis were preserved, and interpretations were contrasted with the original narratives and normative texts to ensure that the findings reflect the voices of the participants and the content of the documents, and not the researcher's biases.

Results and discussion

The analysis integrated the teaching narratives, the responses to the checklist and the examination of the MINERD regulatory instruments. The findings revealed a system of meanings marked by a constitutive tension between a discourse valuing reflection and accompaniment, and an experience that, in substantial aspects, reproduces a technical and hierarchical model. This ambivalence is not superficial, but rather the subjective manifestation of an instrumental matrix that the research itself problematizes, and that is reinforced by the design of the official instruments.

In the first instance, teachers build a representation of pedagogical support aligned with the postulates of specialized literature. They define it as a process of "guidance, support and orientation" (D3), "direct observation of pedagogical practice to strengthen it" (D8) or "space that is used to observe pedagogical practice to improve objectively and critically" (D1). They highlight feedback, the identification of strengths and weaknesses, and the possibility of "converting weaknesses into strengths" (D5) as its most valuable aspects. This positive assessment agrees with the conceptualization of accompaniment as a collaborative and formative professional development strategy (López & Marcelo, 2021; Ravela, 2022).

However, as we delve deeper into the lived experience, the shadow of oversight emerges. D5 warns that accompaniment serves "as long as you do not see it as supervision but as accompaniment", revealing that the possibility of experiencing it as control is not an abstraction, but a real perception. D2, while maintaining that "it is not a process to judge or supervise anyone, but to offer help," describes a sequence (announcement, non-participant observation, receipt of comments and agreements) that places it as an object of scrutiny. The figure of the technician or coordinator who "sits in a place where he can see the entire process and writes down all the observations" (D8) configures an asymmetric interaction.

The documentary analysis reinforces this perception. The instruments "Aspects of the Teacher's Pedagogical Management", "Observation of the Classroom Environment", "Observation of Group Meetings", among others, are structured as exhaustive checklists with an evaluation scale (Excellent, Very Good, Good, Can Improve, Not observed). This formal architecture positions the companion as an evaluator who rates performance based on a pre-established standard, and the teacher as the object of said evaluation. The final section of these instruments ("Strengths, Aspects to improve, Recommendations, Agreements") is eminently prescriptive: the companion diagnoses and prescribes, the teacher abides. This finding is consistent with the studies of Lara-Alcántara and Pons-Peguero (2025) for the Dominican primary level, who warn that the technical approach persists in the practice of accompaniment, and with the warnings of Galán (2017) about the gap between the normative design and the development of a genuine reflective practice. Empirical evidence suggests, therefore, that the perception of verticalism is not only a subjective bias, but a logical consequence of a normative device that prioritizes control over dialogue.

Regarding reflective practice, the teachers outline definitions that revolve around self-assessment and the detection of areas for improvement. D1 understands it as "analyzing our actions in classroom practice", D2 as "taking time to objectively see various aspects of my actions", and D4 equates it to "conducting a SWOT - strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, threats - on the teaching task". These conceptions, although relevant, reveal a bias towards reflection on action as a retrospective balance, with little reference to reflection in action - thinking adjusted in real time - which theoretical references consider equally essential (Agreda Reyes & Pérez Azahuanches, 2020; Domingo, 2021). Reflection appears predominantly as a subsequent act, separated from the immediacy of didactic interaction.

This limitation is parallel to the logic of the instruments. The "Accompanying Self-Assessment Instrument" is the only one that explicitly asks open questions (How did I feel? What kind of help do I need?). However, its subject is the companion, not the teacher. Instruments aimed at teaching practice lack this space for introspection. It is not asked, for example, "What decision did you make during work-play and why?" or "How do you think the organization of the space influenced learning?" Instead, it is verified if "The teacher has created a pleasant environment" or if "she warns a few minutes before so that the boys and girls prepare to conclude their plan" (MINERD, s/f, p. 3 and 11).

Therefore, the teacher's pedagogical reflection is not an explicit requirement in the instruments, which translates into the experience of individual, occasional and low-critical reflection. As a consequence, it is evident that the motivation towards improvement is generic and manifests sporadically over time; for example:

• When exploring motivating situations, generic triggers predominate: "the need to improve" (D2), "wanting to give my best every day" (D5), "get ahead, keep learning" (D7). Although laudable, these motives are not anchored in specific critical incidents, in evidence of children's learning or in documented pedagogical dilemmas, fuel for a systematic and transformative reflection (Domingo, 2021; Peralta-Castro & Mayoral-Valdivia, 2022). The exceptions (D2 with time management, D8 with childhood demotivation) point to situated reflection, but the majority remain at a level of abstraction that dilutes their formative potential.
• The declared frequency of reflective processes exhibits a revealing dispersion: "continuously" (D1), "daily although perhaps not with the same formality" (D2), "every time it is necessary" (D7), "every quarter" (D8). This heterogeneity, together with the fact that some teachers claim to reflect mostly alone (D3, D8), indicates that reflective practice is not institutionalized as a collective, systematic process based on shared evidence. The sociocultural theory of learning places professional development in communities of practice where the negotiation of meanings with more capable others is an engine of growth (Liriano López, 2023; Matos Ramírez, 2025). The absence of a collegiate structure of reflection reduces the practice to a solipsistic exercise, lacking the intersubjective contrast that the hermeneutics of accompaniment requires (Arboleda, 2022).

The consensus about the importance of systematizing reflections is unanimous. The teachers differentiate it from occasional reflection due to its organized, continuous and recorded nature. D3 states: "an occasional reflection remains in the air and I keep the reflective practices in my reflection journal"; D4 adds that it should be "part of my teaching life." They attribute to systematization benefits such as "constant improvement" (D3), "more timely and authentic intervention" (D4) and the possibility of "realizing the extent to which I was able to achieve what I set out to do" (D6). This recognition is consistent with Domingo's proposal (2018, 2021) and with the notion that experience only becomes professional knowledge when it is analyzed and theorized (Soriano Beltré & Pérez González, 2025).

However, when examining the concrete tools, a fragmentary landscape emerges. Some mention the reflective diary or portfolio (D1, D3, D4), but D6, D7 and D8 refer only to the "anecdotal record of the coordinator." This implies that, for a part of the group, the written memory of the reflection resides in an external agent, not in its own and systematic production. The pedagogical diary, as a support for transformative action (Molina Bedoya & Cañas Vallejo, 2019), appears in the discourse, but its effective use is not widespread. D5 does not respond about tools or how it organizes reflections, a silence that can be interpreted as the absence of a personal systematized practice.

The organization of these reflections also presents contradictions. D2 states that he does so "by dates and purposes of observation", while D8 does so "by dates and describing the practice", which suggests an incipient order. However, D6 indicates that the reflection with the coordinator takes place "in a quiet place, between us," emphasizing the climate but not the analytical structure. The pre-eminence of a model where the coordinator leads and records, and the teacher participates in a guided dialogue, although it may be valuable, runs the risk of perpetuating dependency and not developing autonomous systematization competence. The reflective companion must, according to Díaz Reyes (2024), provide scaffolding for the teacher to build his own understandings, not replace him in the function of documenting and theorizing.

The analysis of official instruments reveals the root of this dependency. In all observation documents, the final section (Visits, Strengths, Aspects to improve, Recommendations, Agreements) is designed to be completed and signed by the companion, the teacher, and the center management. Although the teacher's signature validates her participation, the content of the systematization (strengths, recommendations, agreements) is generated and recorded from the perspective of the companion. There is no formal space for the teacher to systematize her own reflection, her own questions or her own learning. The instruments do not promote the creation of a teaching portfolio, a personal reflective journal or a critical incident analysis protocol. Consequently, systematization is configured as an administrative requirement of the accompanist, not as a professional competence to be developed by the teacher. This explains the dependency declared in the interviews and the use of vocabulary such as "reflective processes are recorded" in the checklist, which refers to the activity of the companion, not to the internalization of the competence by the teacher.

The question about difficulties reveals another inconsistency. While D4, D5, D6, D7 and D8 claim to have the time necessary to systematize their experiences and reflections, D1 says they do not have it and D2 and D3 answer "not always". D8, who claims to have time, admits not receiving guidance to systematize, in contrast to D1, who does receive it but lacks time. D2 summarizes the ambivalence by pointing out that there are institutional conditions "that can facilitate or hinder the process in both measures." This contradictory perception suggests that structural factors - teaching load, high enrollment (mentioned by D1 as what should change), institutional culture - do not configure an ecosystem that intentionally and prioritizes reflective systematization. The MINERD accompanying policy (2021) states the improvement of processes, but its implementation seems delegated to individual wills.

Regarding the transformation of praxis, teachers report positive changes: improvement in time management (D2, D8), classroom management (D3), planning (D1, D3, D6, D8) and methodological strategies. Six of the eight participants selected all the aspects listed (planning, methodological strategies, evaluation, environment, interaction and attention to diversity) as transformed areas, which constitutes a perception of comprehensive improvement. D4 provides the most consolidated example, the inclusion of children with special educational needs, which led it to present good practices at the district and university level.

However, a deeper analysis reveals that the nature of the transformation is part of a logic of technical adjustment rather than a critical reconstruction of pedagogical assumptions. D2 adjusted the time to meet the schedule; D3 restructured planning; D8 changed strategy to enhance motivation. These changes are valuable and respond to reflection on instrumental action. In contrast, a critical transformation would imply, for example, questioning the prescribed curriculum based on the real needs of children, modifying power relations in the classroom by giving voice to children, or redefining the conceptions of evaluation and learning. None of the narratives reach that level; The changes remain at the level of effectiveness and resolution of immediate problems. The paradigm of reflective practice as critical inquiry (Domingo, 2021; Matos Ramírez, 2025) aspires for the teacher to assume himself as a researcher of his own practice, capable of deconstructing his implicit theories and generating situated pedagogical knowledge (Peralta-Castro & Mayoral-Valdivia, 2022). The narratives focus on effectiveness and the resolution of immediate problems, without transcending into a theorization of the experience.

This orientation towards effectiveness and resolution of immediate problems is consistent with the structure of the instruments. Items such as "The teacher complies with the established dismissal time" (Organization and Dismissal Instrument) or "The teacher prepares the materials in advance" (Large and Small Group Instrument) induce an improvement oriented by conformity with a desired practice, not by a critical understanding of the underlying pedagogical principles. The absence of questions such as "Why?", "For what?" or "What would happen if...?" in the instruments limits the potential of accompaniment to promote a critical reconstruction of pedagogical assumptions, as defined by Domingo (2021). Reflective dialogue, which according to theory is fundamental (Matos Ramírez, 2025), does not find structural support in these documents.

A relevant finding emerges from the cross-section of responses: the transformation is attributed to accompaniment as a source of guidance, but few teachers explicitly appropriate systematic reflection as an internal causal mechanism. D3 recognizes that the accompaniment was "fundamental because it guides reflection and for oneself to identify what needs to be improved," pointing to a mediation that promotes self-identification. However, D6 states that the changes occurred due to "the personal motivation that I have", dissociating the transformation from the reflective device. Systematization, which should be the bridge between reflection and transformation, is blurred in the stories of change.

The results of the checklist, analyzed in a disaggregated manner, showed relevant nuances. Although the items referring to the identification of strengths and opportunities for improvement, the proposal of concrete actions and the follow-up to agreements received an affirmative response from all the teachers (8/8), the item on "evidence of changes" was affirmed by 7 out of 8, and the item on "systematization of reflections" by 6 out of 8. This variation, although small, indicates that not all teachers perceive that systematization is a consolidated practice, which is consistent with the fragmentary accounts of the interviews.

However, it is added that these results - derived from the analysis of the checklist - should be interpreted with caution. The checklist, when inquiring about the existence of processes, is answered affirmatively because, in effect, formal accompaniment follows a protocol and generates agreements. However, this process is defined by official instruments, which guide it towards verification and prescription. The narratives, which capture the subjective experience, were much more ambiguous, which showed that this process does not translate into an internalization of systematic reflection. The fact that there is a record of systematization by the coordinator does not mean that the teachers have internalized systematic reflective competence.

In summary, the triangulation of the three sources revealed a structural coherence between:

• Teaching discourse: values reflection, but experiences it as supervision and reduces it to technical adjustments.
• The declared practice: confirms the existence of formal records and agreements, but not the appropriation of reflective competence.
• The regulatory framework: the official instruments, due to their technical-evaluative and prescriptive design, promote accompaniment oriented to the control and verification of ideal practices, leaving little space for hermeneutical dialogue, situated inquiry and autonomous systematization.

This structural coherence indicated that the problem does not lie solely in the training of the accompaniment or in the attitude of the teachers, but in the matrix that shapes the accompaniment device itself, materialized in its operational tools. This split between the formal and the substantive level constituted the core of the gap that the research sought to highlight: accompaniment is provided, reflections are recorded, but a true systematized reflective culture that transforms praxis from the teaching agency is not experienced.

In summary, the teachers have incorporated an updated pedagogical lexicon that values horizontal support and systematic reflection, but their concrete experience reveals that the device still operates under evaluative assumptions, with a predominantly individual, occasional and superficial reflection, and with a systematization that, when it exists, is mediated and deposited in external agents. The perceived transformation is real on a technical level, but it does not reach the status of critical reconstruction of practice, keeping teachers in a position of active recipients of suggestions rather than autonomous producers of pedagogical knowledge.

Conclusions

The analysis of teaching meanings and experiences, triangulated with the analysis of normative instruments, revealed a fundamental tension. In the context studied, the participants value accompaniment and reflection, but experience them with a latent perception of supervision. The analysis of official instruments demonstrated that this perception is not unfounded, but is anchored in a regulatory design that prioritizes verification of compliance and technical prescription over reflective dialogue and critical inquiry. Consequently, the resulting reflection is mostly individual and unsystematic, and the systematization is incipient, often delegated to the figure of the companion, since the instruments themselves do not create formal spaces for the teacher to develop this competence autonomously.

These results show that the problem does not lie in the absence of support, but in its reflective quality and orientation. The formal presence of records and agreements, verified in the checklist and in the instruments, contrasts with an experience of dependence and reflective superficiality. These findings, although they are not generalizable to the entire Dominican Republic, offer hypotheses that are transferable to similar contexts and coincide with the warnings of the regional literature. This indicates that the pedagogical support policy, although well-intentioned, has not managed to permeate the professional culture with a true hermeneutical and sociocultural approach.