Educational Change in Spain: Between Committed Renewal and Innocuous Innovation

This paper addresses the phenomenon of the pedagogical renewal taking place in Spain, which started around the turn of this century, from a socio-historical perspective and within the broader context of neoliberalism. It traces the evolution of these transformative educational pathways through the course of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on events that took place during the periods 1920-1937 and 1960-1985 as the key predecessors to the current reform drive, and it discusses the upsurge of new technologies and their impact in the area of pedagogical renewal. The conclusions drawn are the outcome of exhaustive bibliographical review, extensive interviews with key figures in the historical and current renewal processes, and the theoretical discussions that took place among the team of researchers at the University of Girona who developed the research work entitled "The third wave of pedagogical renewal in Catalonia" as part of the ARMIF 2016-2019 programme. The conclusion is that education needs to be politicised to the effect that school is understood as a space where pupils learn how to live as a community through the recognition of and for others and allowing the school community to be affected by what surrounds its pupils. Particular attention is drawn to the use of technological devices for their potential to control, and a call is made to the educational community to address the root reason for education, in other words its purpose, to bring about truly emancipatory change rather than simply introducing adaptive innovations.