Language as a hermeneutic approach to emerging methodologies and technologies in higher education

Abstract

In recent years, the profusion of methodologies available to teachers, thanks to the advancement of emerging and converging technologies, has created significant educational opportunities, but it also poses new challenges. Among these is the need to train teachers to exercise solid pedagogical judgment when implementing these approaches in the classrooms. One of the difficulties in making these critical judgments is the introduction of commercial terms into academic discourses, which hinder the thinking and assessment of these advancements from an educational standpoint. Therefore, the objective of this research is to reclaim the educational meaning of certain concepts necessary to contemplate these emerging technical and pedagogical methods in the realm of higher education in the face of the reconfigurations these terms have undergone due to the influence of economic ideas introduced by supranational organizations into the collective educational imagination. With this goal in mind, three documents from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development under the "Horizon 2030" program are first analyzed to identify ideas and concepts that have been integrated into academic discourses. Subsequently, from a hermeneutic-interpretative perspective, the meaning of these terms is revisited from the university philosophy and pedagogy standpoint. The results of this research enable an understanding of the authentic educational significance of words like new, valuable, critical, democratization, active, autonomy, or study, among others, which are essential to approach emerging methodological advances and technological approaches from an educational perspective, detached from economic considerations.