A New Year - Introduction

Secondary Education in Argentina is mandatory and lasts around five or six years depending on the province. The Curriculum in Argentina emphasises the importance of nurturing all areas of learners’

development taking into account their learning trajectories and backgrounds. Although quality education is highlighted all across the document, we feel that this is not always the case. The theoretical basis is very well supported but the truth is that most adolescents do not find what they are being taught appealing. This is reflected in the increasing high drop-out rates, low grades and general demotivation. So the question arises: what are we doing wrong? How can we change it?

Having as a framework the curriculum’s aims of Argentina: educating committed subjects who are capable of appropriating the knowledge and critically transform their reality, addressing knowledge in a context, and ensuring equal opportunities and possibilities, we would like to address the following aim which recognizes adolescents and young people as legal subjects and their cultural practices as a constitutive part of the pedagogical experiences of schooling, to strengthen identity, citizenship and preparation for the adult world. As educators, we should honestly ask ourselves if our students’ cultural practices are, in fact, a constitutive part of our pedagogical experiences. What would happen if we could put this assertion to practice by considering students’ real interests as the learning core of our teaching practices. Since we need to create affective and emotional bonds with adolescents it is of paramount importance to anchor their passions in our daily learning experiences. Besides, the here and now is the moment where adolescents must engage with learning and enjoying, and not only think about what they will do in the future with that knowledge.

The classroom should be a place where technical knowledge and skills are developed in a balanced way. To encourage our learners to pursue their passions, we need to equip them not only with the necessary knowledge but also with diverse skills and abilities so much needed in the 21st century. These skills, mentioned in New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, known as 6Cs are: character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking should be nourished and mediated by the implementation of technologies. Should be we promote resilience and tolerance so that learners can deal with social and ecological global issues? Is it not crucial to develop critical thinking in a world where people are manipulated every day to follow certain ideologies and consumerism has become a way of life? And which is the role of creativity? Is being creative only important to the individual or should we aim at using our creativity to build a more peaceful, just and equal world?

The foundations of secondary education are inclusion, respect for diversity, justice, and integral learning. The idea is to aim to have a curriculum thought for everyone involved, especially considering those who are less favoured. These pillars take place at schools, where students can construct meaningful knowledge. Despite that, schools need to revise their culture, organization, and pedagogies so they do not contribute to generating further social differences and inequality.

Teaching today is improving pedagogical strategies, providing students with possibilities to construct their lives and their futures, assuring constant learning trajectories, and mostly offering new and diverse learning opportunities bearing in mind learning styles, rhythms, needs and interests. This can look challenging and overwhelming, but facing the process synergically and collaboratively with colleagues can be helpful and possible.

The role of teachers in education has fundamentally changed in the last few years. Teaching nowadays is not just giving instructions or drilling; it is about modifying methodologies, pedagogies and contents. Teachers have to find new propositions, new projects and activities that allow them

to articulate different demands. Good teaching practice is committed to transmitting values such as justice, inclusion, diversity and respect. Teachers have the social responsibility to promote respect toward all people and to create more inclusive, fairer and safer learning environments. On the other side, the role of students is not just being consumers of facts. They are active creators of knowledge and most importantly, creators of ways of application learning outside the school environment. The process of teaching and learning is a process of transformation in which both teachers and learners resignify their roles.

When describing approaches, I can say that Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a “top-down” approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow it down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data – a confirmation (or not) of our original theories. On the other hand, Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a “bottom-up” approach. In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories.

To conclude, unless new pedagogies and methodologies emerge and are implemented, and teachers are committed to the process, trying to reverse the crisis in education is almost impossible. The paramount requirement is to engage in educational systems in which students' interests and passions, their emotional bonds, values such as collaboration, effort and creativity enhance their significant content and, at the same time, trigger and cultivate deep learning. Is it an easy endeavour? Definitely no, but reflecting upon it is the first step towards it.