8. The cognitive revolution in the twenty-first century teacher’s formation

Abstract

The present essay was made with the purpose of pondering about the statements that are basis for the arguments, perceptions and considerations that guarantee the basic affirmation we support: the teacher’s career in the twentieth century, as well as a great part of the tradition that sustains it, is victim of the limitations and false premises that contaminate its theories and practice. The teacher’s career, and more precisely the teachers’ formation, needs as much as our civilization, a cognitive revolution, a radical change that should affect not just our ideas and believes but also, as Martin Heidegger would say, to our being-in-the-world in its most basic and essential features. We hope that those ideas, based on the theoretical claims of Castaneda (1974, 1975, 1988, 2000), Hilman (2000) and Maturana and Varela (2001) among others, can contribute to the huge task of seeking and promoting the changes in the formation of teachers in Venezuela. Those changes are necessary for a new teacher to emerge, a human being conscious of its real nature and existential possibilities in a society affected by the uncertainty in all its manifestations. The essay is ended with a proposal for a liberating teaching practice in three areas: a) for trainers of trainers; b) for those who are training in the teaching practice; and c) for the citizens of the world.