The European teacher in the age of digital transition

The idea of a European educational space, then, from its first emergence, comes to be embodied in the project of a virtuous, dynamic and transnational area for inclusive and quality education, in which our young people, in addition to developing the training and skills needed to meet today’s many challenges, can mature, share and fortify their common belonging to the European Union.

The main documents that mark the evolution of this ambitious project1, focusing fundamentally on its social and identity potential, its general orientations, as well as the identification and definition of strategic priorities and goals to be achieved in itinere, do not, however, go into the merits of education, that is, they do not address or envisage a specific discussion of what didactic knowledge might be functional for the inclusive and quality education that is intended to be pursued, and thus on what aspects of teaching, traditionally understood, should the main efforts at renewal converge, and thus, ultimately, on what should be the future professional profile of the European teacher, at once the objective and the instrument of the European educational space.

Nevertheless, between the lines of the documents considered, there emerge, even in this respect, some unequivocal orientations, albeit non-systematic and of a general nature, which can constitute starting points to try here to trace, at least in broad outline, the aforementioned profile, in dialogue, of course, with the most recent and consolidated acquisitions of scientific research in the educational field. Research – it must be said – that, although in remarkable and undeniable expansion since the 1980s of the last century – both in terms of the broadening of its problematic horizons and in terms of the maturation and refinement of conceptual tools and modes of investigation that are increasingly adequate and effective –, today appears squeezed between the difficulties of educational and training institutions that still struggle to acknowledge its outcomes,e very acquisitions that have distinguished it in recent decades.