Saperi esperienziali e leadership sostenibile nell’educazione degli adulti. Riflessioni pedagogiche

Abstract

Experiential Knowledge and Sustainable Leadership in Adult Education. Pedagogical Reflections

This article tries to reconcile the two factors that in past decades have characterised the educational debate on adult education and on education as a whole: the traditional dimension of on-going education and the emerging concept of lifelong learning. Experiential learning, the validation of experiential acquirements and the dynamics of sustainable leadership by educators appear as the field where this discrepancy can be resolved in an antinomic relationship. In the context of sustainable management, the past professional career of citizens and labour market demands are important variables for our societies characterized by the knowledge economy. In today’s reality, the paradigms often referred to are the paradigm of complexity, which is an interpretative figure of Modernity, and the paradigm of sustainability, which emerged from Post Modernity or Late Modernity. They are, or seem to be, paradoxical terms, but their dynamic relationship leads to an essential need for educators: the sustainable management of complexity. Experiential learning and sustainable leadership undertaken by educators fit into this scenario and are an opportunity for those who have the educational tasks of creating the future, in addition to conserving and selecting the past. Finally, they are a sort of creative recombination of past, present and future projects. Thus, past environments, cultural traditions, indigenous knowledge, social and working experiences and collective memories are preserved and defended because they are valuable in themselves (the ontological dignity of human beings) and are a resource for meaningful learning and improvement of living conditions.