Person-Centered Education in the 21st Century. Tomeu Barceló

This presentation seeks to set out some ideas around the Person-Centered Approach and its imprint on education in the 21st century.

Like any approach, it constantly needs to be updated and adapted to new times.

In the field of education today, the Person-Centered Approach needs to incorporate some contributions from Gendlin’s experiential approach.

From a person-centered and experiential perspective, it is possible to discover new ways of addressing educational processes and the role of the teacher.

What matters in education and in the teacher’s role is not instruction but the promotion of learning. Designing the conditions of possibility that make this feasible is the aim of this presentation.

Education is in constant evolution, because we live in a changing world that is transforming at an accelerated pace. As a result, education is always under scrutiny, questioned, criticized, and brought into doubt.

An educational model is proposed that is centered on the internal potentialities of each student, which can be unfolded and developed if optimal conditions are provided that enable the student to grow, learn, and evolve constructively.

It is a model that requires a change of perspective in which the focus of attention is on people and their interactions. What experiential and person-centered education calls for is that we become companions to our students on their own journey, in the integral development of their personality. Taken together, this means facilitating learning for life.