Challenges and changes in the school: a new horizon

Abstract

Future economic growth and social progress in knowledge societies rely increasingly on innovation. Innovation require skill sets such as technical skills, thinking and creativity skills, as well as social and behavioural skills. A blind spot is, figuratively speaking, the inability to recognize a fact or to think clearly about a particular subject, mainly because of prejudice. The blind spot in the innovation of the education and training system lies between the aspiration to “make” a difference and the “prejudice” towards this ambitious goal. In the last 20 years, in fact, despite the fact that an evaluation system has been implemented in practice as well as in the norms, the main stakeholders have shown an attitude of aversion and opposition both to some provisions of the legislation and to the use of the assessment results made by the school administration. The lack of engagement in the innovation process is mainly due to the perception of the different conditions of the school system, which suffers from large structural inequalities and resources, a condition that reduces its possibility of being equal rather than quality-oriented. What to do then? It is important that the different stakeholders understand each other’s opinions, expectations, prerogatives, principles and values that underpin the innovation (or innovations) and above all that the activities car-ried out are actually aimed primarily at the progress of student maturity and school progress, i.e. ensuring the specific needs of the main stakeholders in addition to the demands for innovation from the labor market.