The Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPA) was created in 1999, through agreement 020 of the High Council, and was attached to the Faculty of Fine Arts. It directs its activities to the training of education professionals, based on the development of a curricular proposal jointed with the policy guidance of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN by its acronym in Spanish), which are expressed in the Academic Statute of the University, Agreement 010 of 2018 issued by the Council Superior.

In the setting of performing arts education in our country, it is evident that teachers who have been trained in drama schools – as BA Drama teachers – and who have artistic practice as their central life project (being directors, playwrights, and actors in theater companies) tend to uncritically transfer the practices of reference – the actor’s discipline – to university teacher training programs. The BPA’s response was not only to diagnose this deviation, but to propose epistemological and methodological alternatives that visualize the emergence of a new field of knowledge: drama teacher training, where artistic work gathers pedagogical knowledge and didactic practice. According to Alfonso (2013), in research focused on studying teaching activities in relation to university teaching has shown how being a drama trainer/performer is a profession in its own right. This condition is not based on personal qualities, but on the fact that one has a knowledge of teaching, and other knowledge of teaching, i.e. linked with theatrical practices, but that is not the same as theatrical practices, in terms of the way in which they are edited, incorporated, and organized. In fact, the research has shown that, among other things, teachers develop the latter based on the former’s teaching methods.