Innovation in education is often seen as a commitment at improving the quality of education.
But what does it mean to educate?
To this essential question, the French geneticist and humanist Albert Jacquard answers “E-ducere” that is to say “to awaken the appetite, to create needs, to raise questions”. “Education must be lived as a commitment in the collective game where men and women – (Jacquard called them“lucid men”) – build themselves mutually.”
This vision of education takes us far away from the classroom where it usually stays and brings new perspectives to innovators in education.
The challenge is to (re)think of education as a global solution to meet the following three objectives:
- “Awakening the appetite” – thanks to communication and awareness-raising
- “Creating needs” – applying participatory methodology and design thinking
- “Raising questions” – with user-generated contents
Innovation in education in this context means much more than “anyone, anywhere, anytime”.
Education is a dialogue, an innovative form of communication that must favor the creative and constructive appropriation by ALL the inhabitants of the planet and above all by the younger generations of ALL the themes vital to our future.
Education relies in this new context on a “pedagogy of the question” and not on prefabricated answers or ready to use technology with pre-existing contents.
Education requires the participation of all in the construction of the common good.
Education is thus the means of sensitizing and provoking the participation of the greatest number on each of the subjects that condition the quality of our lives and our “living together”.
Education is therefore a tool of social transformation enabling individuals, starting with the youngest, to become aware of problems that are essential to them, to move forward with behavioral changes and to influence the behavior of the community in which they live.
Innovators in education have no other choice than to contribute to this social transformation. Are they aware of it?
