Escape from Teaching

This text is a call to action. The title Escape from Teaching may sound a bit like an imperative. However, much of the recent findings from educational and brain research, especially regarding the potential benefits of informal and self-structured learning, are never realized in educational practice. It is time to ask: What did we really learn from all those years that we spent in instructional and often insulting contexts? What have we got to show from our formal education and what can we become as a result of this experience? What do we forget in such contexts and did it deprive us of our self-confidence and self-structuring skills? What consequences are associated with seeking and testing can equip us with permanent skills and abilities? How could educational institutions change to become places for successful self-directed skills development? And, how can we, as individuals and as a society, develop the potential that rests within us all?

Many European and non-European countries, such as Germany, are racing into a momentous educational catastrophe almost unchecked: a competence catastrophe. Instead of nurturing learner competencies, such as creativity and self-directed learning, some educational organizations continue to favor traditional forms of learning, even in the face of digitization, employing what the author refers to as mediation logic that has no backing from modern research evidence in neuroscience and learning research. If the competence catastrophe can be stopped at all, then a courageous train of thought, such as that of Rolf Arnold presented in this book, requires implementation in pedagogical practice!, The concept presented in this book by Rolf Arnold provides, among other things, important foundations for understanding the development of diversity competence in education: A self-organized development process facilitated through an enabling educational framework. Doubts, contradictions and confusions are addressed in this book, which promotes an educational framework that targets competence development, including understanding the didactical process of assisting learner competence to systematically cope with the experience of experiencing, but also wider competencies such as the ability to cope with cognitive, but also emotional dissonance.

Rolf Arnold, PhD, obtained his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1983 and his postdoctoral qualification at the Distance Univerity of Hagen, Germany, in 1987. Since 1990, he has been Professor of Pedagogy (Vocational and Adult Education) at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Germany. He is also Scientific Director of the Distance and Independent Studies Centre (DISC), Kaiserslautern, Germany, and speaker of the Virtual Campus Rhineland‐Palatinate (VCRP).