Participatory Education for a Living Planet

Today we celebrate International Education Day. As an educator, I am in a continuous process of learning from the field.

While developing my competencies as an educator, I have adopted Paulo Freire’s critique of the ‘banking’ model of education, which regards students as mere receivers of cognitive knowledge, devoid of creative impetus. Creating participatory learning environments became my field of investigation and expertise. Classes are designed to ignite the fire of curiosity and learning happens as a social meaning-making exercise.

The pandemic led to a global learning disruption of unprecedented scale and severity. According to UNESCO, the closure of schools, universities and other learning institutions, as well as the interruption of many literacy and lifelong learning programmes, has affected the lives of 1.6 billion students in over 190 countries.

The design challenge ahead of us is how to maintain the flame of lifelong learning alive and at the centre of the recovery and the transformation towards more inclusive, healthy and regenerative societies.