Resumen de Pan-European training and networking for education professionals: the Pestalozzi Programme of the Council of Europe
Over the past decades (since the 80s of the 20th to the first decade of the 21st century) we have witnessed a strong move towards considering education principally as a technical issue, probably also inspired by the technological revolution during these decades. �How to teach?� became more a question of �How to structure the learning process?� than providing an answer to the more fundamental questions like �What shall the society look like for which we are educating?� or �How does effective learning take place?� Efficiency, benchmarks and a close to obsessional addiction to evaluation have taken up the main space in public debate and in practice.
A change of direction in education is needed. This is not new. Change is the only permanent feature. Many have expressed this wisdom in one or the other way. For example Herakleitos of Ephesus1 �Everything flows, nothing stands still.� This doesn�t imply that any change is desirable. We need to agree on the direction of change and we need to be active, be the actors of the change we would like to see.
So, the first question certainly is the one about direction �Where do we want to go?� The second question will definitely be �How do we best get there?� The Council of Europe proposes a vision of �Sustainable democratic society� based on the principles of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in all the concrete manifestations they may take when applied as underlying guiding values for living together in peace.
The Pestalozzi Programme of the Council of Europe adopts and advocates an approach to teaching and training based first and foremost on the conviction that education must mirror the principles and values of the society we want to live in today and we want our children to live in tomorrow.
The contents of our teaching and the desired learning outcomes must be in line with what we want to achieve. Most people will agree to this. However, this implies that our pedagogy and the methodology must change too.
