Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future
International Centre of Excellence on Innovative Learning, Teaching Environments and Practices
Mission
The Centre of Excellence “Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future ” on Innovative Learning, Teaching Environments and Practices, based in Shanghai, aims at looking beyond the current trends in basic education worldwide and at identifying the most innovative and edge ideas, to study and understand how to implement them on the long-term. The Centre studies and disseminates innovative learning and teaching environments and practices for the future.
The activities promoted by the Centre “Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future” include:
Organization and partnership
The International Centre of Excellence “Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future” on Innovative Learning, Teaching Environments and Practices, is coordinated by an international scientific board:
Professor Xiao-Wen Li (http://faculty.ecnu.edu.cn/s/683/t/7439/main.jspy)
Professor He Min (http://faculty.ecnu.edu.cn/s/523/t/5519/main.jspy)
Professor Jaan Valsiner (http://personprofil.aau.dk/130747)
Professor Giuseppina (Pina) Marsico (http://docenti.unisa.it/023114/home)
Professor Luca Tateo (http://personprofil.aau.dk/130534)
The main partner institutions are:
East China Normal University, Department of Psychology and Department Preschool Education, Shanghai, RPC
Aalborg University, Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg, Denmark
University of Salerno, GRIS- Research Group on Social Interactions, Salerno, Italy
Federal University of Salvador da Bahia (UFBA), Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Salvador, Brazil
University of Luxembourg, INSIDE – Integrative Research Unit on Social and Individual Development, Luxembourg
The global context
Education is a human activity in continuous development. This is the core of the Cultural Psychology of Education framework. There are no ready-made and perpetual solutions that work for everyone and everywhere. For instance, the World Economic Forum’s Global Challenge Initiative on Employment, Skills and Human Capital published in 2017 the report of the Future of Jobs project. According to this report, the 65% of the students currently enrolled in the educational system will have jobs that are not yet existent this day. It has been stated a false belief that some cultural or geographical areas are more developed in teaching/learning practices and that such areas correspond to the most wealthy nations. Innovation can spring from anywhere and requires to be adequately cultivated, not only economically but also in terms of cultural ground and collective efforts. Therefore, in cultural psychology perspective the education of the future must be regarded global in its vision yet local in its solutions
There is a general ongoing movement of reforms in education, as for instance in China, Italy, Nordic Countries and Brazil, trying to reform the school system either at the level of primary or secondary education. There is also a huge debate about the relationship between the “school for all”-principle and the neo-liberist and job market-oriented approaches to education. This debate has been discussed in several of the major journals in the Education. Yet, education is an open system in constant development, accordingly, the question of “what’s next” remains crucial. What is at stake today, and what may be even more relevant in the future, is the capability of formal educational systems to be an effective environment. This applies not only to the acquisition of different kinds of skills nor to securing the ongoing development of creativity and innovation. Crucially and foremost, a vision of a future-oriented education applies to the supported development of students’ full potential beyond social expectations.
A long-term vision
This Center of Excellence is aiming to overcome the current dichotomic debate between either an education centered on the popular appeals to creativity, spontaneity, local culture and play or to an education centered on evidence-based, standardized and performative teaching/learning/assessment cycles. Both of these naïf visions end up becoming assimilative and flattening ideologies that create confusion between standardization, equality, equity and social justice. This way the risk is twofold. First, the current social projects of education end up by reserve only to some elites. Second, an education that works with abstractions and stimulates the capability for logical reasoning becomes ever dominant. A visionary education for the future in cultural psychology perspective should explore and find solutions to teaching/learning practices and their environments. Furthermore, it should consider local solutions to global challenges that provide the different social segments with knowledge that transcend their own experiences. Additionally, it should offer more complex tools to analyze reality and reach higher levels of explanation of phenomena in order to facilitate a higher degree of future-oriented readiness to agency. Still, today’s educational systems have reserved these forms and processes of knowledge only to a segment of the population. In consequence, the mechanisms of social exclusion to different marginalized groups are sadly reproduced redundantly.
The major challenge of the future, this Center of Excellence is claiming, will be to grant the whole population with opportunities through formal education. How to do this will be a matter of innovation and not just of sustainability. As education should still be a way to free oneself from the oppression of daily life that, for a growing part of the population, also in European countries, is becoming a source of discomfort (due to, for instance, the economic crisis). The future learning-practices shall develop better ways to pass from the project-based, hands-on, experience-based and vocational approaches to the capability of developing abstract and general forms of knowledge. The capacity of higher forms of thinking is indeed the condition to develop metaphoric thinking, poetry, critical thinking, scientific innovation and finally to fully act as active citizens. If this possibilities are in the end granted to only a minority of the population, for instance by dividing very early vocational from theoretical education curricula, the risk is to reproduce social inequalities.
The future that the Center of Excellence is pursuing is not a finite horizon. Future, as all developmental processes, is a border moving together with its observer. Schooling is a privileged arena to study the dynamic and dialogical development of the person, the institution and the culture.
Focus
The Centre of Excellence “Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future ” on Innovative Learning, Teaching Environments and Practices, is promoting research and reflection upon the most innovative and meaningful local experience in teaching/learning. In particular, the current projects focus on:
Contacts
For further inquiries or scientific collaboration, please contact:
Professor He Min, mhe@pie.ecnu.edu.cn
Professor Pina Marsico, gmarsico@unisa.it
Professor Luca Tateo, luca@hum.aau.dk