We are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Debats d’Educació by giving the educational community the opportunity to air its views
I’m an educator and social entrepreneur. I specialise in service learning which is a way to teach and learn while doing community service.
I worked as a special education teacher and also in public administration but I have dedicated most of my career to informal education as part of the leisure movement.
I am currently a member of the Ashoka Social Entrepreneur network and work to spread awareness for service learning in Spain. I am also an associate professor at ESADE at Universitat Ramon Llull.
In addition, I am a part of the coordinating group for the Service Learning Promotion Centre and the Hospitalet de Llobregat Service Learning Group, the Zerbikas Foundation in the Basque Country and the Ibero-American Service Learning Network. I collaborate with the Cátedra Medellín-Barcelona professorship and the SES Foundation in Argentina.
The three things I’ve learned
Girls and boys are already active citizens who are able to foster change in their environments
Let’s stop considering them the citizens of the future! Girls and boys can and should offer their efforts, talent and creativity to improve today’s society.
Education cannot just be used to improve individual skills. Today, more than ever, we must recover the social meaning of education and make people aware that educating means creating competent citizens who are capable of changing the world.
Let’s talk clearly to our boys and girls and tell them that they must not just study for their own wellbeing but also because they have to use their best talents to serve others as proclaimed in the first Declaration of the Rights of the Child (Geneva Declaration, 1923).
Participating does not just mean offering opinions and making decisions. Participating is all of this but, above all, getting involved, putting yourself to work, making an effort. In just one word - committing.
Service learning is an effective way to learn while serving the community
Service learning combines educational success and social commitment. Girls and boys learn better, it increases their commitment and motivation towards what they are learning if they can make sense out of what they learn, if they apply the knowledge and skills to solve the problems around them.
This is why service learning is not just an educational tool but also a community development tool because it increases the social capital of a community, fosters common values, teamwork by educators and social stakeholders and the people’s trust when it comes to facing challenges and difficulties. We must consider placing value on and disseminating these practises a priority.
Social organisations must incorporate educational objectives
Social organisations (leisure, cultural, charitable, environmental, etc.) must have a mission to educate people as well as promote their cause. And they should not only carry out this mission in informal areas of education but also in collaboration with primary schools, secondary schools and universities.
We encourage social organisations to work with schools and schools to be willing to work with the organisations around them.
Quim Brugué TorruellaCatedràtic ciència política (... Els alumnes no recorden les assignatures, recorden els professors
Mª Victòria Gómez Serés Pedagoga: Vocal del Col·legi de... Acompanyament
Ismael Peña-LópezProfessor de la Universitat Oberta... L'ofici d'aprendre
Luis CumbeProfesor Que la educación es el vestido de gala para ir a la fiesta d la...
Josep Mª Aragay BorràsEducador social i musicoterapeuta La música és una eina extraordinària
JUANJO RODRÍGUEZ HERNANDEZPROFESSOR D'ESO/CAP D'... EDUCAR ÉS UN PRIVILEGI
Esteve Campins BagurDocent de secundària L'educació, bàsica per un país
The texts published on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, covered by the Creative Commons Spain Attribution 3.0 licence. You may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided you attribute it (authorship, journal name, publisher) in the manner specified by the author(s) or licensor(s). The full text of the licence can be consulted here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.en Users who participate in this initiative must accept the abovementioned licence. Rights regarding the photographs and personal data that are requested for participation are governed by the terms and conditions established in the legal notice published by Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.