By Carlos Trullén Calvo - Presenter at the ICOT 2015 - Abstract related to his coming conference.

Society and economy present nowadays a high level of dynamism, which is demanding from organizations a continuous adaptation to the environment. This fact has led to an increasing interest on the topic of how teams learn and how this knowledge is distributed to the organization as a whole. So, knowledge has become the most important asset for people, organizations and society in general.

Schools are living today a turbulent time because of the changing educative paradigm. The focus of interest has turn from teaching into learning. The R&D (Research and Development), knowledge and innovation triangle is pushing schools to adopt new pedagogical methods. The pressure on old teachers about modifying their traditional way of procedure is huge, while policy makers are changing the teacher training curricula.

For schools to make the jump from the 19th to the 21st century, they need to re-focus their attention.

Instead of worrying about the content of the syllabus, the form of assessment, or how to re-engage the disengaged, they need to ask: what kind of mind training — or, more formally, 'epistemic apprenticeship' — is going on, day in, day out, in classrooms? I show that any topic can be used to cultivate passivity, dependence and credulity, or to build resilience, creativity and self-evaluation. It depends on the physical, practical and pedagogical cultures that teachers create in their classrooms.

Globally there have been many recent attempts to do this re-focusing, with very mixed, not to say disappointing, results; this has often been because there has been insufficient clarity and precision about how teachers are being asked to change their practice. The Building Learning Power (BLP) approach, deriving from a growing network of academics, teachers and a small publisher, has spent the last 15 years researching what these practical shifts in pedagogy actually look like. Small changes are required in the way teachers conceptualize 'powerful learning', in the design of activities, in classroom discourse, in the attitudes towards learning which teachers model, in involving students in the design and evaluation of their own education, and in the forms of assessment used.

A recent evaluation shows the BLP approach to be effective in boosting student engagement and achievement, whilst at the same time strengthening the habits of mind that young people will need to thrive in the tricky, turbulent waters of the 21st century.

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Dirk Van Damme, director of innovation and progress indicators OECD, believes that the use of resources should be improved and Spain needs to abandon its rather traditional way of teaching These words were addressed mainly to the Spanish educational institutions to mark the launch of 'Panorama of Education 2014 "in Madrid on September 10, 2014.

This expert added that "Spain spends enough on education. The question is whether the expense is commensurate to the level of investment. The problem is what students are learning and how they learning, because they are not developing the skills that society and the economy needs. "

Van Damme believes the training of teachers in modern methods is the key "Getting in front of the students with a book just is not helpful." Spain needs to modernize teaching techniques in the classroom as teachers are very traditional. He also stresses that it is not only important to train young teachers but also continuing education and training throughout life is essential. He believes that an improvement of competencies and professional skills is urgently needed.

According to Robert Swartz, a member of the International Standing Committee of the ICOT, rote learning does not create thinking or knowledge. Learning should be active, based on explorative and communicative processes in which the student enriches his mind with the thinking of their peers. This requires a profound methodological change teachers.

Also, Rosemary Hipkins, a Speaker at the ICOT 2015 and head of the Council for Educational Research in New Zealand and an expert on core competencies OECD,
notes that the conceptual knowledge of the curriculum does not have an analytical approach to fully understand the concepts but to make students learn more easily and transmit the knowledge . However, this does not mean that students learn.

Once a democratic system is achieved, its consolidation and maturity will happen when the people start to acquire abilities much deeper than the rule of majority, incluiding important thinking abilities. Which are these thinking abilities and thinking dispositions? What role do they play in present democracies and how can they be developed as an integral part of democracy?