Service learning at the service of the education community

Abstract

Technological, productive and organizational advancements trigger transcendental transformations in the workplace, which necessarily require a substantial and suitable change in the educational system. Managing these transformations require collaborative and solidary competences. Furthermore, new economic approaches linked to the development of capabilities and character open up an educational system based on the learning of care, responsibility and solidarity. Service-learning can make it possible to reach the core of the issue and, through a valuable exchange of interdisciplinary knowledge and competences; it can also re-ignite educational participatory practices, which are linked to democratic development. For this to happen, it is important to disseminate service-learning practices widely, going beyond its fashionable acceptance and combating the inertia of a reality that has bureaucratically conformed to the norm even with continuous novel developments, whilst also enabling the growth of a movement that has been developing from the bottom up, with the help of a reticular exchange of experiences and knowledge allowing for a new political centrality of an educational system that is finally proactive.