The generative curriculum in the University training of teachers

Abstract

This paper intends to contribute to the debate on ‘generative education’ beginning with the contribution of solicitations arising from the theory of systems and of the ecological paradigm. In particular, it will focus on the new
way of thinking about life proposed in Santiago’s theory (Maturana & Varela, 1988), according to which the cognitive dimension and the biological dimension of living systems are closely connected, in a incessant activity of selfgeneration
and self-perpetuation (Capra, 1997) which determines continuous processes of change in the organization of the autopoietic networks.
Although independent from outside ambient for the changes needed to identify itself, the living system isn’t for the resources, nutrients and energy, but also the information, which are necessary to guarantee its survival. This type of structural change to the network, called developmental change, which occurs after a perturbation arising from the outside environment, causing but not specifying or organising the re-adaptation of the connective schema. Maturana and Varela (Maturana & Varela, 1988) introduce the concept of structural coupling to indicate that some of these interactions between organism and environment have the characteristics of stability or re-occurrence.
The structural changes that arise inside the system following these couplings are cognitive acts. This aspect, which is of remarkable importance for educative purposes, seems, paradoxically to be ignored in traditional pedagogical reflection.
For the time being, therefore, we present a theoretical analysis focussing on analysing the relationship between student/university like a particular form of the structural coupling between living systems and environments posing
important questions regarding the effective capacity of the education community, and in particular of those members responsible for the initial formation of teachers, to ‘create disturbances’ and therefore trigger changes.
The results of this change of perspective are the identification of the university curriculum like strategic perturbing device of the individual’s knowledge network, in an autopoietic key, and the creation of a model university curriculum designed especially to ensure the formation of abstract mental habits (Baldacci, 2010a) considered strategic for the training of future teachers.