César Coll

Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Barcelona

I am a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Barcelona. I have taken part in various processes of educational reform and innovation, and I have produced studies and research related with the interaction and influence of education in formal education and school settings.

The three things I’ve learned

How to make the transition to a system in which learning can take place anywhere and at any time?

Topic:

Competencies and learning in a globalized world

Teaching within the framework of a new ecology of learning

For some decades now, we have witnessed important changes in the role that learning plays in people’s lives and in practically every parameter related with learning: where, when and how we learn, with whom and from whom we learn, and also what and why we learn. These changes are creating an "ecology of learning" that differs appreciably from what forms the basis of school education, presenting the latter with unprecedented challenges that require educational policies, initiatives and practices that are equally unprecedented.

The question is how to make the transition from an organized system constructed around the absolute primacy of initial education and formal education institutions to another in which learning can take place anywhere and at any time, and in which education is a process that is, to a great extent, distributed among the contexts through which people pass. In my view, tackling this issue today is a high priority. The future of our educational system will largely depend on how we approach this issue and the responses that we come up with.

Educating competent learners

In a globalized world, the capacity to learn is one of the most highly prized assets, which suggests a clear purpose for school education in this setting. There are many contexts in today’s society that offer opportunities and resources for learning, but only formal education institutions can guarantee systematic action oriented towards developing the capacity to learn of everyone without exception and, above all, without exclusion. Having said this, educating competent learners demands that both the curriculum and educational practices are reviewed in depth, as well as the accountability procedures centred around evaluations of pupil performance. Educating competent learners involves helping them to reflect on what they learn – both inside and outside formal education institutions – and on the meaning that what they learn has for them; to build an image of themselves as individuals with the capacity to learn; to identify the situations in which they can develop this capacity more effectively; and when they do not find these situations in their vicinity, to look for them and even create them.

Adding learning and the school curriculum to the process of personalization

Thanks to ICT, the number of contexts that offer opportunities and resources for learning has increased enormously, and there is now a wider range of activities and learning available to people in these contexts. Personal learning paths are the access routes par excellence to information and knowledge in the information society. In spite of this, personalization has not succeeded in crossing the threshold of schools offering formal education, especially in the case of basic education, where a uniform curriculum holds sway, which, as well as being overloaded, sets out to standardize learning. Regardless of whether we want it or like it, the personalization of learning is now a reality outside primary and secondary schools, and it is something to which many pupils aspire. Thus, there is an urgent need to knock down the barriers raised all too often in the minds of pupils, when they see school as somewhere that is removed from the rest of the world in which they live. And there is an urgent need to do so in such a way that this personalization guarantees the development of competencies and the availability of essential basic learning to all pupils without exception.

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The three things I’ve learned

Teaching within the framework of a new ecology of learning

Educating competent learners

Adding learning and the school curriculum to the process of personalization