Presentation issue 19º

EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE

The articles that we offer in the monographic theme draw brushstrokes about the possibilities that are open to education in the future. Are these brush strokes able to compose a puzzle from which the image of future education emerges clearly? Surely not, reality is always more complex and unpredictable. Antonio Rodríguez de las Heras talks about a powerful and upcoming virtual space, which competes with the real one in capturing the interest of the students. The door between both spaces, between both worlds we could say, is something as insignificant in appearance and as affordable as the mobile. Is education possible in which both worlds participate? It is increasingly common to see groups of young people absorbed in their virtual world, perhaps looking for company or defending their loneliness, ignoring each other and despising the interaction and the warmth that the group provides. Will the classroom of the future be the privileged space in which to find the harmony and balance necessary to seek knowledge in both realities and use it profitably for training?

Juan Carlos Tedesco in a magnificent article whose title is Uncertainty or Hope raises the question of whether, as it happens today, properly trained teachers in educational institutions will be the answer to the demands of training for the future. Through his article we see the scope of the decisions that must be made, aspects such as genetic manipulation and its consequences, the inclusion or exclusion of certain social sectors, care or destruction of the world we live in, will be, among others , aspects that require high ethical and moral cognitive development. He affirms that as in all crucial stages of history, the option of uncertainty or hope opens up.

Mario Muñoz Organero, professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid, presents reflections on two lines that direct the future of education at the hand of technology. On the one hand through the deployment of open and massive courses through the Internet or MOOCs and on the other, through the use of the electronics that we are carrying all the time and more on our mobile devices. Both technologies have profound educational implications that will, in many cases, rethink learning models and that are beginning to assume an educational revolution (still in the making).

Santiago Esteban Frades, in reference to the school of the year 2050, raises the possible structure of the educational system, the most critical issues, the functioning of schools and classrooms, all centered around a central theme of projection that is the educational inclusion.

Looking to the future, two different situations are those raised, in education, Fernando Andrés Rubia in his article "The future of education in a neoliberal context", on the one hand, the disagreement in the educational line of the two main political parties that have governed Spain in recent years (neoliberals and social democrats) and in the currents that define the ends of education. On the other hand, the vertiginous social changes caused by information and communication technologies and by globalization.

Alba García-Barrera offers us a new methodology known as flipped classroom or inverse classroom, which consists in inverting the traditional way of understanding a class: those activities linked mainly to the exhibition and explanation of contents are offered outside the classroom, through technological tools such as video or podcast, or simply internet. In this way, school time is mainly devoted to the realization of the most important activities for learning, such as practical exercises, the resolution of doubts and problems, debates, work in small or large group, etc.

Arturo Galán critically analyzes the current situation of the university system and proposes some possible scenarios of future evolution, knowing that it is very complicated to predict the evolution of the Spanish university system. It affirms that the Spanish university would have in its favor a good formation of the students and a remarkable scientific production with an investment smaller than that dedicated in other countries. All in all, it recognizes that it occupies a discreet place among developed countries and that in the future a clear improvement challenge arises.

Lucía Almazán Ruiz affirms that the current educational model arose with the industrial society whose need was to produce. Maintains that it does not serve the knowledge society based on information. As a means to achieve it and produce it goes to the ICT being the role of the teacher the guide and generator of the learning process.

But does the teacher have enough preparation to be a guide and generator of the ICT-based learning process? Is not education lagging behind? Again Antonio Rodríguez de las Heras states that we must overcome the not infrequent inclination to consider that the train of technology has passed and that education may not have caught it in time, that education is delayed in relation to other activities cause of its indecision or inertia. No, he says, the train has not arrived yet; maybe he is now entering the station.

Finally, we would like to highlight the interesting study carried out by Ignacio Peña on the staff of the Education Inspectorate in Spain in the period 2007-2013. This effort, supported by the entire Federal Board of ADIDE, allows the researcher to have some data of great interest for the study of education inspection.

The Editorial Board.