El cambio educativo ante la innovación tecnológica, la pedagogía de las competencias y el discurso de la educación emocional. Una mirada crítica

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the pressures placed upon the education  system in order for it to adapt to the needs of the economic world. Therefore, we shall investigate what directions that system is taking nowadays on three different levels. First, we analyze the role of educational innovation linked to the development of technological applications, which is not only configuring new teaching and learning models, but also business opportunities inspired by the entertainment industry, thus threatening the continuity of the educational system and as we know it today. Secondly, we examine the pedagogical approach to competencies that, beyond promoting changes in school culture, favors the development of a pragmatic and economic vision of education. Finally, and based on the discourse about competency education and the theory of multiple intelligences, we analyze the role that the promotion of emotional competencies in education is taking from the influence of positive psychology and the happiness industry. The connections between these three levels underline how it contributes to configure the functional subjectivities according to the neoliberal rationality that governs us. Facing these tendencies, it appears necessary to claim the renewal of the pedagogical commitment with the new generations. This commitment has to provide more than only a free election of a formative menu for the professional development or the development of an educational culture interested mainly in the emotional competencies and the promotion of the spirit of entrepreneurship. In opposition to the current pedagogical tendencies that only encourage a model of individualistic and psychological citizenship, we claim -like Hannah Arendt- a pedagogical commitment relating the subject with culture, the desire of knowledge and the opening to a common world.