Are humans failing? Philosophical equivoques of academia and the role of Assessment and of Creativity
Event Title
3rd International EAP/ ESP Conference
Year (definitive publication)
2022
Language
English
Country
Greece
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Abstract
Paulo Freire, James Dewey and Agostinho da Silva are unanimous in arguing that
teaching and learning are being perverted by institutional partisan bias, which
misunderstand the philosophical backbone of the whole educational project. Education
has to contribute to the happiness of humankind, as was voiced by the Enlightenment
movement and written in the Preamble of the Pittsburgh Declaration of Independence of
1776, in the now called United States of North America. Today’s Assessment of
educational results, refers to three spheres of action: students, professionals, and policy.
(i) Student’s Learning Assessment, e.g. the Pisa Report; Erasmus experience (ESCE-IPS
1990’); Blended Learning and Hybrid education (TGI ESTS-IPS, 1990’); Technical Writers
intensive courses (APCOMTEC, 2009); MOOCs (IPS, 2000’); Maker Spaces (Maquijig,
2000’). (ii) Academia and Staff Assessment, e.g. Professional Development Plan;
Curriculum and Materials Development. (iii) Educational Policy Assessment, e.g. the social
impact of public policy. No matter the area of educational intervention, the same
reasoning is applied. Educational ecosystems are politically programmed to manage and
control, that is, to regulate and condition creativity. However, a society that does not
promote and nurture creativity, and, worse, a society that actively punishes and rejects
creativity, is bound to fail. No scientific or technical development may exist, persist or be
maintained, i.e. survive, without active and pro-active public and private interventions on
both sides of the teaching-learning duo. If and when education fails, everything else is
bound to fail, because education represents the backbone of science and technology,
which is the fundamental institutional structure of present contemporary societies. The
purpose of the present text, with its hindsight’s and call for explorative and open debate,
is to offer a theoretical and practical reflection on the urgent and mandatory change in
educational policy worldwide, locally and globally. Creativity needs to be reinvented. And,
more importantly, this reinvention process has to be assessed in an effective and
consequential manner.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
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