Abstract:

Education is living harsh times. Traditional ways of teaching, such as masterclasses and uni-directional transmission processes, co-exist with innovative methods, which imply uncertainty and permanent change. Therefore, new teaching methodologies and strategies find themselves in nowhere land, with a long way to go still. It looks like Education has never found itself in the middle of so many social transformations, so it needs to become flexible and tolerant to answer to society’s challenges and demands. Critical thinking and analysis must appear in every teacher’s theoretical horizon, so he/she incorporates it in his/her training, as well as in his/her everyday practices. Therefore, the key to transform Education might be to re-think and to re-build it from within.

Aware that critical thinking is needed in the classroom, we have conceived a project of experiential learning. It consists of organizing debates and using them as pedagogical tools with the students of the MA Program in Teacher Training and Education, specially with those who are trained to teach Economy in Secondary Education schools in the future. With this activity that we carried out during virtual sessions of the subject “Learning & Teaching Economy”, our goal was to confront our students (and teachers-to-be) with the main problems and challenges of present-day Education. They were asked to discuss around different topics, according to the rules and structure that they decided, and asking their colleagues to participate in the debates actively.

We divided the class in groups of two people, and we celebrated the debates every fortnight. Every time, the coordinators of the debate provided the rest of the class with different types of audiovisuals and readings, so everyone had previously gathered enough information in order to contribute to the discussion. After 10-15 minutes, once everyone had already viewed the audiovisual and readings, everyone expressed opinions and different views about the topic suggested, while the coordinating pupils moderated the debate.

In the academic year 2018-2019 we have celebrated 22 debates, in which we have addressed the use of ICTs in Education, the project to create internships for first-year teachers, access to the University, the design of textbooks, the school in the future, inclusive education, education and ideology, discrimination, sexual education, homework, women and education, etc. The average timing for the debates was one hour and a half, though some discussions took us almost two hours. Around 15 students were connected always, and all of them participated in an active and constructive way.

The initiative was successful. In fact, an unexpected consequence of it was that discussions went on in the Forum of the subject involved, because the students that could not attend the virtual sessions were so interested that they felt eager to express their opinion anyway. Another consequence, in this case expected, was that all the students regarded respectful dialogue and discussion as proper tools for learning and attempting to change our social conditions. Debating requires linguistic and critical skills, which one can only develop those skills exercising them. And above all, discussing implies to question everything, and to accept that other interpretations, different or even better than ours, are possible. To sum up, the experience has taught us that words can work as tools to re-shape the concept of Education.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, debate, discuss, respect, questioning, teacher training.